Charles Francis Adams 




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Book _.Aii A_2^ 

Copyright N^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Charles Francis Adams 

oy^n Q^utobiography 




/ konJisJ Aojtx^ c)fotaWLj 



Charles Francis Adams 

An Autobiography 



With a MEMORIAL ADDRESS 

delivered November 17, 1915, by 

Henry Cabot Lodge 




BOSTON &• NEIV TORK 
Houghton Mifflin Company 

The Riverside Press, Cambridge 
1916 






COPYRIGHT, 1916, BV THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March jgib 




w&R 20 1916 

©CI.A4 28J84 



Note 

In 191 3 Mr. Adams sent to the Massachusetts Historical 
Society a sealed package, containing, as he expressed it, 
"an autobiographical sketch," to serv^e as material for a me- 
moir to be prepared for publication in the Proceedings of the 
Society, when the occasion should arise. Full authority 
was given to the Editor of the Society to make such use of 
this "sketch" as seemed to him proper. Of the contempo- 
raries of Mr. Adams no one remained qualified, by knowl- 
edge or sympathy, to prepare a memoir, and the autobio- 
graphical sketch, on examination, made a search for a 
biographer unnecessary. It is full and characteristic of 
the writer. 

The Memorial Address by Mr. Lodge was delivered in 
the First Church in Boston, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 
November 17, 191 5, at a public meeting of the Society in 
commemoration of Mr. Adams. The proceedings were 
marked by great simplicity and deep feeling. The invocation 
was made by the Rev. George Angier Gordon; and the bene- 
diction given by the Rev. Charles Edwards Park. 

W. C. F. 



Contents 



I. MEMORIAL ADDRESS. BY HENRY CABOT LODGE ix 

II. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS I 

I. YOUTH AND EDUCATION 3 

II. LAW AND POLITICS 3^ 

in. WASHINGTON, 1861 7^ 

IV. WAR AND ARMY LIFE 114 

V. PUBLIC SERVICE AND HISTORY 168 

INDEX 2^9 



Memorial Address 



No man who reflects, certainly no one who gives rein to his 
imagination, can approach even the slightest attempt to tell 
the story of a man's life upon earth, whether it be his own or 
another's, without feeling that he is doing so in obedience to 
one of the overruling impulses, one of the deep-seated in- 
stincts of humanity. He cannot escape the vision of the suc- 
cessive generations of men as they pass by in long procession 
recounting, each in its turn, the lives and deeds of those who 
have gone before. 

The form remains; the function never dies. 

We fain would learn where the function and the form began 
and when they issued from the darkness. There comes no 
answer to our questioning. We cannot know, we can only 
guess. 

In those dim, mysterious regions of the past, about which 
conjecture alone is possible, we may nevertheless be sure 
that, as soon as men secured command of language, the first 
use to which they put it, after passing beyond the base needs 
of daily communication, was to talk of themselves and of 
each other. When Browning's Eurydice cries to Orpheus: 
No Past is mine, no Future; Look at me! 

we listen to the passionate voice of an old, sophisticated and 
complex civilization. Primitive man was the very reverse of 
this. He clung to the past and grasped blindly at the future. 
A little speck in the vast spaces of time and eternity, his 



Memorial Address 



overwhelming spiritual need, the craving hunger of his soul 
was to bind himself to those who had gone before and strive 
to clutch that which was still to come, so that he might in his 
ignorance rescue himself from the loneliness In which he wan- 
dered, helpless and unaided. Memory and Imagination were 
his sole resources; so he turned to the singers, the reciters, the 
ballad-makers, the minstrels, and the rhapsodists to tell him 
of his past, of the heaven-bom heroes from whom he liked to 
think that he was descended, of the wars, the deeds of arms, 
the conflict with forces of nature, of light and darkness, of the 
vague traditions and legends which were to him unchanging 
and unquestioned truths. This to him was history, and he 
sought the future In the prophecies and predictions of his 
sibyls and priests and soothsayers, in the signs of the heavens, 
in the flight of birds, and among the entrails of animals. 

When some great genius, when more than one, perhaps, 
like him to whom the Greeks gave the name of Cadmus, dis- 
covered a method of expressing language by certain arbitrary 
signs, men began to carve those signs on stones, paint them 
on walls, bake them on bricks, and finally to write them on 
papyrus, on skins, on bark, and on parchment. Thus they 
recorded events which seemed to them memorable, facts 
began to rear their hard, unfeeling heads, and imagination 
slowly withdrew from a world In which It had once reigned 
supreme. One form of these records was the epitaph, the 
attempt to tell upon the tombstone something of the life of 
the dead who lay beneath, of the ancestor to whom primitive 
man had always clung in the wide wastes of the universe, 
which he could not understand, and to whom he had given 
his worship. Thus biography began, and, as Carlyle says, 
"History is the essence of innumerable biographies." Com- 



Memorial Address xi 



pared to the untold myriads of human beings who have lived 
and died, the number of biographies, of epitaphs, of bare 
mention even, in lists or catalogues, is trifling, and yet each 
one of the countless and unnoted millions had his trials and 
sorrows and joys, his virtues and his crimes, his soul history, 
deeply interesting if truly narrated and rightly considered. 
But we can only deal with what we have, and from what 
we possess must infer the rest, for that alone is permitted 
to us. The inference thus drawn is history, which is not a 
science, for it can never be exact, which is at best an ap- 
proximation to truth. From it we can learn greatly, but it 
is as barren as a table of statistics unless informed by im- 
agination and presented with the finest skill of which lit- 
erature is capable. Moreover, the biographies, the recorded 
lives of men, whether brief or copious, whether resting on a 
few allusions or filling volumes of minute detail, are not only 
the material of history, but are each and all the picture of a 
human being, of a human soul, in its short and troublous pil- 
grimage from the cradle to the grave. If we look upon them 
with considerate eyes, there is nothing of equal interest and 
importance in the whole range of the great literature of knowl- 
edge. I have no intention of embarking upon this vast ocean 
of inquiry or of attempting to examine the development of 
the written lives of men and women. I would merely note 
here one fact: that not only from the time when men scrawled 
the names of their fellow-men on stones, but from the much 
earlier day of the history preserved in the trained memory of 
those who recited poetry and ballads, we almost always find 
an effort at least to tell the names, if nothing more, of the 
father and mother, perhaps of the more remote ancestors, of 
the hero whose deeds the minstrel chanted, or even of the un- 



xii Memorial Address 

sung dead lying in perpetual calm beneath the carved stone. 
The impulse which gave rise to this habit was wholly natural. 
The desire to define the man or woman who had gone, for 
the benefit of the generations yet unborn, would be quite 
sufficient to account for it. Yet one cannot help feeling that 
there was a vague idea working in the minds of these remote 
people, dim shadows as they are, in the dawn of recorded 
history, that ancestry not only defined but explained. At 
all events, certain it is that the primeval habit continued, 
and also expanded and developed as civilization advanced, 
so that by its influence and pressure a great literature came 
into being. In all the historical writings of Greece and Rome, 
wherever an account is given of any man something almost 
always is said of his parents, often of his ancestors. This 
was the custom from the days of Herodotus to those of 
Plutarch, whose biographies, so sweepingly condemned by 
Macaulay, have none the less delighted succeeding genera- 
tions of readers, who cared naught for the writer's political 
principles, but rejoiced in the stories which he told. Thus 
has the practice passed on through the centuries until it has 
reached the days of the evolutionists, of Darwin and Mendel 
and the modern biologists. Now parentage and ancestry are 
no longer in biography merely a means of definition, the 
creators of the atmosphere and the influences amid which 
the hero or heroine of the tale grew to maturity and achieve- 
ment. They have become scientific necessities, preliminaries 
absolutely essential to any just comprehension of the human 
being whose life and work arrest our attention and invoke 
our consideration. In simpler phrase heredity is now not 
only an inseparable but an indispensable part of the task of 
the biographer, whether he tells his own story or that of some 



Memorial Address xiii 



other man, whether the life so written fills volumes or is but 
the merest outline and suggestion. We no longer smile at 
Dr. Holmes's remark that a man's education should begin 
one hundred and fifty years before his birth, for the saying 
involves a great scientific truth which Dr. Holmes foresaw, 
as he did much else for which he did not receive due credit, 
in the wide regions of thought and speculation. 

In Charles Francis Adams, second of the name, whose life 
and character, whose manifold activities and public services 
we seek fittingly to commemorate to-day, the hereditary ele- 
ment of biography is marked and conspicuous in an unequalled 
degree. I say "unequalled," which is a perilous word, for a 
universal affirmative, if not as impossible as a universal nega- 
tive, is almost as dangerous. Yet I think the word is justi- 
fied. It would be difficult to find in history another case of 
four successive generations of intellectual distinction and the 
highest public serv'ice equal to that sho^\^l by the Adams 
family during the past century and a half. In some of the 
long royal dynasties instances of great ability are no doubt 
found, but they are as a rule isolated and the high position 
itself is inherited, not won. Among the Plantagenets even, 
the dynasty more productive of remarkable men than any 
other of modem times at least, the highest ability came at 
intervals and the union of ability and character only at very 
protracted intervals. The house of Orange-Nassau in Wil- 
liam the Silent, his two sons and later his great-grandson, 
William III, presents a very famous case of inherited abil- 
ity; but there again the great opportunity and the high 
position were a birthright. 

There have also been many instances of long descent where 
the same family has held through centuries the same titles 



xiv Memorial Address 

and estates, but this means little because the titles and 
estates usually sustain their possessors instead of the pos- 
sessors upholding and adding glory to the honors and prop- 
erty won by the hard-handed, hard-headed founder of the 
line. No doubt from these distinguished families, both in 
England and on the Continent, have sprung some great 
men as well as many men of strong abilities ; but the men 
of mark have been sporadic and not in close succession dur- 
ing four generations. Frequently there has been only too 
much justification for Pope's oft quoted lines: 

What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards? 
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. 

Very rarely does one find a case like that of the family of La 
Tremoille in France, where a strain of vigorous ability com- 
bined with energy, force, and character runs in varying de- 
grees through several generations; but the Tremoilles never 
touched the summit in either political or military life and the 
favoring opportunity was a birthright. We have, of course, 
the famous instance of the elder and the younger Pitt who 
both reached the zenith of power, but then came the end, as 
it did in the less conspicuous case of Lord Burleigh and the 
Earl of Salisbury, after whom the line waited two hundred 
and fifty years before it again shone forth in the high places. 
But in our American family, with no adventitious aid of 
titles or estates, without the lucky chance which Lord Thur- 
low described as "the accident of an accident," the first two 
of the line by their own ability, their own energy and force, 
their own strong, fine characters, rose to the highest pinnacle 
of public service and public distinction. Each, in the words 
of the son, fulfilled his aspiration that he might be permitted, 
"By the people's unbought grace to rule his native land." 



Memorial Address xv 



To the third, to the grandson, was given the opportunity 
in the darkest hour of his country's trial to perform the great- 
est service rendered by any civilian except Lincoln himself, 
with whom none other can be compared. He took the 
"Master of human destmies " by the hand and gave the great 
service in full measure. To follow even in the most meagre 
outline the careers or to endeavor to describe in the most 
superficial way the characters and achievements of John 
Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Charles Francis Adams, 
would be to review the civil and diplomatic history of the 
Thirteen Colonies and of the United States during more 
than a hundred years. I shall not attempt to do this, for 
time and space forbid, and my sole purpose is to speak of one 
of the fourth generation who were born heirs to this family 
history. 

It was a great inheritance, and unless we realize something 
of what it meant in all its aspects, we cannot justly appreci- 
ate him in whose honor we gather here to-day. It was an 
inheritance of which the possessors, unless false to all that is 
best in human nature, could not fail to be proud, one which 
any man might justly envy and desire; so pervading in its 
influences that a biographer of any one of the fourth genera- 
tion might well make his theme a study in heredity. Yet at 
the same time it must not be forgotten that this remarkable 
heritage brought to those who received it burdens as well as 
honor. The famous ancestor, still more immediate ancestors 
of the highest distinction in successive generations bring to 
their descendants with an unrelenting insistence, from which 
the average man is free, Carlyle's question, "What then have 
you done.^" The effort, not unfamiliar, by which a man of 
independent spirit strives to show that he has merits of his 



xvi Memorial Address 

own, stands on his own feet and refuses to be simply "the son 
of his father," is a severe one. How much more severe the or- 
deal when a man is forced to demonstrate that he is not only 
something more and other than the "son of his father," but 
also more and other than the "grandson of his grandfather," 
and the "great-grandson of his great-grandfather." If the 
possessor of such a heritage is a man of strong nature and vig- 
orous mind, the determination to assert himself, to do work 
which the world will recognize as his own, to prove that he is 
an independent, individual entity and not simply a descend- 
ant, becomes a dominant factor in his whole growth and 
development. Moreover, the fact of such continued success 
and celebrity in one family for over a century implies neces- 
sarily a stock of unusual robustness, physical, mental, and 
moral, as well as strong qualities of mind and character which 
become more emphasized by each transmission and which 
pass into and govern, almost like the hand of fate, those who 
inherit them. In the Education of Henry Adams weight Is 
given to the Introduction of another strain from beyond the 
New England borders by the marriage of John Quincy 
Adams. But, to the dispassionate observer, the Southern 
blood thus brought in seems to have had a sentimental rather 
than a real effect. The Mendelian law of the dominant and 
recessive qualities would appear to apply. The dominant 
qualities reassert themselves; the recessive, although still 
existent and with the possibility of reappearance, fade away, 
especially after only a single crossing, to a dimness which In 
human beings Is a practical effacement. This one Infusion 
from without could not overcome or even affect materially 
the qualities and tendencies of a strong Puritan stock carried 
in three generations to the highest power by unusual abilities 



Memorial Address 



XVll 



and exceptional force of character. The heirs of the quahties 
thus fostered and developed could not escape them, they were 
life companions and controlling influences. They brought 
their o^\'n exceeding great reward, but by the doctrine of 
compensation they also brought their penalties. As an exam- 
ple the independence of thought in John Adams developed in 
John Quincy Adams both mental solitude and minute intro- 
spection which passed on to his descendants with no waning 
force. The peril involved in excessive introspection is obvi- 
ous, for, 

Thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; 
And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
With this regard their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action. 

That the third and fourth generations not only avoided 
this danger, but conquered the tendency which so strongly 
gripped them, is abundant witness of their mental and moral 
strength as well as of their vigorous intellectual honesty. 

To such an inheritance Charles Francis Adams, second of 
the name, son of Charles Francis and Abigail Brooks Adams, 
was bom on May 27, 1835, in a house on Hancock Avenue, 
then and now, although upon the brink of change, a nar- 
row lane for foot passengers only which runs by the State 
House grounds from Beacon to Mount Vernon Street. In 
Boston and Quincy his boyhood was passed, and he had 
as a birthright all that was best in the community into 
which he was bom. An unprejudiced outsider would justly 
have said that in home, parentage, and associations he 
was exceptionally fortunate, and this judgment, broadly 
speakmg, would be true. But human nature both m boy 



xviii Memorial Address 

and man Is so constituted that the good things of Ufe are 
taken as a matter of course, while the spots on the sun or 
the flies in the ointment loom large. With some tempera- 
ments the things disliked are pushed aside and the pleas- 
ant aspects prevail both at the time and in memory. With 
other temperaments the exact reverse occurs. In the case of 
Charles Francis Adams, as with many other boys similarly 
situated between the years 1835 and 1865, Boston was inex- 
tricably associated with winter, short days, cold, snow, and 
schools, while the summer home, in his case Quincy, meant 
the long days, warmth, sunlight, out-of-door life, and a pleas- 
ing absence of lessons. Boston, therefore, he earnestly dis- 
liked and Quincy he regarded with distinct although not 
exaggerated approval. Upon him, again as with other boys 
of like condition, the lingering forms of Puritanism, the seri- 
ous Sundays, burdened with much church-going and ample 
Biblical instruction, weighed heavily. Most boys took this 
ancestral bequest as the work of a malignant fate, tried with 
a strict economy of truth to evade it so far as possible, and 
bore what they could not escape with the odd philosophy 
characteristic of boys when they meet the inevitable. Charles 
Francis Adams, however, was not an average boy, and he not 
only hated the Boston winters and the solemn dreary Sun- 
days, but actively resented them, and found no philosophy, 
odd or otherwise, which would save him from kicking against 
the pricks. The spirit of the reformer was strong within him 
even in those earliest days although he was no doubt uncon- 
scious of its influence. In the brief autobiography which he 
bequeathed to the Historical Society, he not only vents his 
feelings in regard to these conditions of boyhood, which were 
common to the time, but he also dwells upon two additional 



Memorial Address xix 

grievances, one of which was, I think, exceptional, while the 
other was largely shared by his contemporaries, who for the 
most part did not regard it as a misfortune or indeed with 
any hostile feeling. The first of these grievances concerned 
outdoor sports and exercises. He learned to swim, but this 
he says was the only athletic accomplishment he had oppor- 
tunity to acquire. He unquestionably learned to skate, al- 
though he puts it down as one of the things he missed, to- 
gether with boxing, fencing, and riding, in which boys ten or 
fifteen years younger were certainly instructed and which 
they all enjoyed. Nor did he have apparently in the usual 
ample measure the games and sports common to boys of 
that time or a little later. His brother, in the Education oj 
Henry Adams, says that there were no trout streams on the 
Cape. This shows that the youth of the family did not wan- 
der far afield as sportsmen, for there are trout streams in 
that region even now, some carefully preserved; and in the 
"forties" of the nineteenth century they were more numer- 
ous and full of fish. I printed not long ago a letter from 
Webster to my grandfather, who was also an expert in 
the gentle art, describing a day's trout fishing in Plymouth 
County and giving the weight of his spoils which he sent to 
his correspondent. There was no lack, then, of trout streams, 
nor of deep-sea fishing, and there was an abundance of shoot- 
ing along the coast, for the shore birds, now departed, were in 
those days plentiful. The boys of my time had all the shoot- 
ing and fishing they could reasonably desire, but it is clear 
that the atmosphere in which Charles Adams found himself 
was not favorable to sports and outdoor life, a situation no 
doubt to be regretted in the case of any vigorous boy. Charles 
Adams felt it as a grave misfortune and in his autobiography 



XX Memorial Address 

attributes this mischance to his father. There were many 
boys of those days who managed to get their fill of sports 
and exercise without any especial paternal sympathy, so that 
the failure in this phase of boy life cannot in this case be 
charged wholly to the shortcomings of the head of the house. 
At the same time it is clear that the elder Charles Francis 
was not one who would stimulate or actively encourage in 
his sons the athletic side of life or the love of outdoor sports. 
His own childhood had been passed in Europe during his fa- 
ther's long diplomatic service. He had never suffered from or 
enjoyed in the usual measure the education or habits of the 
ordinary boy. His education, varied as it had been, was un- 
doubtedly better than that of most American boys, but by 
the very circumstances of his life abroad he lost much in the 
way of boyish associations, sports, and mischief. He was not 
likely, therefore, to appreciate the value of these things to his 
sons. Charles Adams in his autobiography quotes from his 
father's diary where the writer speaks of a morning, passed 
with his boys fishing for smelts, as a day wasted, and the son 
makes the very reasonable comment that no time was less 
wasted than that. But Charles Adams made too little allow- 
ance for the difference of temperament. In his father the 
Puritan strain was very strong, the New England conscience 
which insists that unattractiveness is a powerful evidence of 
duty was extremely vigorous. The traditions of race and fam- 
ily were with him commanding. To the country, to public af- 
fairs, to the care of his family and estate, to work of all sorts, 
with pen and voice, but always to work, he felt that all his 
energy and all his time should be devoted. As independent 
in thought, as determined and fearless in warfare against a 
public wrong like slavery as any who ever bore the name, in 



Memorial Address 



XXI 



the lesser matters, in literature, in science, in manners and 
modes of life and standards of conduct, the elder Charles 
Francis Adams was conservative. He was not wholly free 
from the influences and thought of the eighteenth century 
which were still potent during the iirst thirty years of the 
nineteenth. That particular frame of mind seems a hundred 
years later not without charm, but the charm does not appear 
to have been felt by Mr. Adams's son who came into the 
world just as the eighteenth century really passed away with 
the coming of the railroad and the departure of the stage- 
coach. 

The son Charles says of himself as a boy that he was not 
original, but that he was individual. He was by no means 
destitute of originality, but he was certainly indiiidual, 
and his normal, instinctive attitude was one of questioning 
and even of revolt against anything existent, established, and 
accepted. Here he differed from his father, as I have just 
said, in temperament, and because of this difference he did 
not make suflicient allowance. 

In the Education of Henry Adams the writer thus describes 
and estimates his father: 

Charies Francis Adams was singular for mental poise, 

absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness, — the faculty 
of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone, — 
a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor 
avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferior- 
ity, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even 
under great pressure. This unusual poise of judgment and tem- 
per, ripened by age, became the more striking to his son Henry 
as he learned to measure the mental faculties themselves, which 
were in no way exceptional either for depth or range. Charies 
Francis Adams's memory was hardly above the average; his 



xxii Memorial Address 

mind was not bold like his grandfather's or restless like his 
father's, or imaginative or oratorical, — still less mathematical; 
but it worked with singular perfection, admirable self-restraint, 
and instinctive mastery of form. Within its range it was a 

model. 

Upon one young man who had the privilege of knowing 
Mr. Adams after his return from Europe, and to whom he 
was very kind and considerate, he made precisely the im- 
pression so admirably given in the sentences just quoted. 
That impression was deepened by all the young man learned, 
as he grew older, from the letters and history of the time. On 
only one point would he now disagree. It is his opinion that 
Mr. Adams's mental faculties were unusual in depth and 
range when applied to any subject with which it was his duty 
to deal as a public man and he thinks that this is abundantly 
proved by his work as Minister to England and on the Ge- 
neva Tribunal. But such qualities and such a temperament, 
however much he loved and admired his father, did not ap- 
peal to Charles Francis the younger so strongly as they did to 
others. There was too much calmness and reserve, too much 
acceptance of the existent and the traditional, too little "di- 
vine discontent," too little of the spirit of general revolt, to 
be wholly sympathetic. Hence the criticism, not without 
foundation, of the lack of sports, games, and outdoor life in 
his boyhood, and also upon another point with much less 
reason. This last dissatisfaction was with the failure of 
his father to send him to a boarding-school. He felt, quite 
rightly, that association and attrition with other boys were 
the best part of education and, not so rightly by any means, 
that he could not and did not get them at the Public Latin 
School of Boston whither he was sent with his elder brother 



Memorial Address xxiii 



and the rest of his contemporaries. It is not quite easy to 
understand why he felt so strongly upon this point. The 
boarding-schools of that day were by no means what they 
have since become, and, judging from my own experience 
and that of my contemporaries, there was an ample associ- 
ation and attrition with other boys both in the public and 
private Latin schools of Boston, if one chose to avail one's 
self of them, as most boys did. If a boy did not find in these 
schools the valuable education to be gained by contact with 
his fellows, the difficulty, so far as my observation went, was 
in the boy, not in the opportunity which seemed to be in all 
ways sufficient to those who took advantage of it. 

Charles Adams was in like manner dissatisfied with the 
instruction given in the Boston Latin School. At that period 
we had the old-fashioned classical curriculum, Latin, Greek, 
mathematics, a little classical history and geography, and 
exercises in declamation. The methods of teaching were 
largely mechanical: learning by rote the Latin and Greek 
grammars, which were reviewed every year, writing Latin 
exercises, memorizing the Greek and Latin prosodies in order 
to read and to recite Latin and Greek verse, and in those days 
to make a false quantity in Latin was little short of a crime. 
It was not the best method of learning languages, which 
should be acquired as we acquire our own tongue by practice 
and ear and then syntax and prosody can follow. But there 
was nevertheless a real mental discipline in it and boys came 
out of school with a considerable knowledge of Greek and 
Latin. Since then the field of studies has been greatly ex- 
tended and the methods of teaching in some directions no 
doubt improved, but the net result seems to be that boys now 
know less about more subjects than they did in the middle of 



xxiv Memorial Address 

the nineteenth century and it Is not apparent that they are 
any better fitted to use, control, and apply their minds, 
which Is after all the real purpose of education. But the nar- 
row range of studies and the faulty methods of instruction 
were a sore trial to Charles Adams and made him in later 
years an effective and most valuable educational reformer. 
At the moment they filled him with disgust and drove him 
to revolt, so that at the end of three years In the Public Latin 
School he persuaded his father to let him study with a tutor 
and thus prepared he entered the class of 1856 at Harvard 
in the sophomore year. To have thus omitted the freshman 
year seemed to Charles Adams long afterwards to have been 
a serious mistake, as it undoubtedly was. Yet his career in 
college was a success and his college life a happy one in con- 
trast to that of his much disliked and contemned school- 
days, although the methods of teaching then In vogue at 
Cambridge were not Ideal, and were certainly not suited to 
Charles Adams. He was well on the way to being a good 
Greek scholar, to the possession of the language, so that 
through life It would always have been a pleasure and re- 
source. Like others in similar cases, discouraged by the mode 
of instruction, he let it go and again like others never ceased 
to regret his loss. But there was large compensation in other 
directions. He made friends and his friends were the best 
men of a time when there were In Harvard many good men 
destined to future effectiveness and success. Thus at last 
he came Into contact with his kind In the way he had always 
desired, and he felt, rightly no doubt, that it did him a world 
of good. He became a member of the college societies and 
took therein an active part, for his literary capacity was even 
then easily recognized by his fellows. He did not seek rank 



Memorial Address xxv 

in scholarship and failed to rise above the middle of the class 
list. This, however, was of no great consequence, for he read 
much and widely, his mind expanded and intellectual growth 
and development began. There is no greater satisfaction 
than this sensation of growth and advance in mental power 
and Charles Adams realized and appreciated it. Most im- 
portant of all, what he modestly calls his "aptitude," what 
others would term a natural gift and marked talent, now 
found an opening and showed Itself forthwith. He began to 
write. It was an inherited gift. He himself says that his 
chief boyish recollection of his grandfather was that he was 
always writing. So the inborn tendency to think and then to 
seek expression for the thoughts broke forth at Harvard and 
found easy opportunity in the societies, in the college maga- 
zines, and presently in the newspapers. This it was, more 
than anything else, which made his college career a success 
and caused him to look back upon it with less severity of 
criticism than that awarded to the preceding years. There 
was much, no doubt, that was wrong in existing conditions, 
in modes of instruction and the like ; there were, as he thought, 
many mistakes and lost opportunities, due entirely to him- 
self, the statistics of which he kept with great care, and yet 
the general effect of the Harvard years was not only satis- 
factory but happy. To the onlooker it seems as if there were 
every reason why it should have been so. When a man at the 
age of twenty has found something worth doing, which he 
likes to do and can do well, as was the case with Charles 
Adams's writing, he may be deemed to be fortunate In no 
common degree. I believe Charles Adams realized the satis- 
faction and happiness he had found In writing, but I do not 
think that he regarded himself as particularly fortunate 



xxvi Memorial Address 

therein. The proverb is something musty, but one cannot 
but recall the familiar Latin line, "O fortunatos nimium, 
sua si bona norint." 

Graduating in 1856, Charles Adams, deciding to be a law- 
yer, as the obvious thing to do, did not go to the Law School, 
which later he thought was a mistake, but entered as a stu- 
dent the office of Dana & Parker, which was certainly a very 
wise choice. That he learned much law there is not apparent, 
but he was brought into close and daily contact with two 
very unusual men, which was in itself an education. Richard 
H. Dana, Jr., whose biography Charles Adams wrote many 
years later, was a man of the finest character and an idealist 
as well. His Two Years Before the Mast, so aptly called by 
Mr. Adams "The Odyssey of the Pacific Coast," gave Mr. 
Dana a permanent place in our literature. He was also one 
of the leaders of the bar, distinguished alike in the law of 
admiralty and as an international lawyer. Above all, he had 
devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause and to the defense 
of the fugitive slave, with a courage and disinterested zeal 
which did him the utmost honor. His partner, Mr. Francis E. 
Parker, did not take the position either in literature or public 
life which would give him a place in history, but he was none 
the less a remarkable man. An eminent lawyer, he was also 
in the best way both cultivated and accomplished, a lover of 
art and of literature, with a keen and penetrating wit, delight- 
ful as a friend and companion, familiar with men and cities 
and a wise judge of both. Charles Adams fully appreciated 
and valued the two partners, and only a few days before his 
death I talked with him about Mr. Parker and his opinion 
of him fully coincided with that which I have just expressed. 
From close association with such men he no doubt profited 



Memorial Address xxvii 



largely, but If we may trust his own account he did not learn 
much of the law and he gave a good deal of time to the pleas- 
ures of society, all very natural to his age and opportunities. 
"Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine." Who would 
have age and experience speak otherwise to generous 
youth? One would be a churl, indeed, to refuse to give 
the kindly permission. None the less, within two years our 
Laertes managed to pass the formal, easy examinations of 
those days and was admitted to the bar by Chief Justice 
Bigelow. 

Thus duly certified professionally he took an office, first 
with his brother John and then by himself, and sat him down 
to wait for clients. This Is a dreary, trying business at best 
and was peculiarly so to Charles Adams, not merely from 
temperament but because neither then nor later did he have 
any real liking for the law. To become a la^vyer was an obvi- 
ous thing to do, but the obvious was in this case wholly un- 
suitable. If clients did not come, however, events did. The 
storm of civil war was gathering, as we can see now, the po- 
litical atmosphere was heavily charged and dark clouds were 
beginning to drift across the sky. Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams the elder was elected to Congress, the Boston home 
was closed, and Charles Adams the younger found his way 
to Washington to see his family. Politics and public ques- 
tions were to him with his Inheritances a second nature. 
Here there was no innate repulsion as with the law. They 
attracted him and absorbed his thoughts, and the extracts 
from his diary describing men and events in Washington are 
deeply interesting. No one realized what was coming, no one 
gauged the future correctly. It Is all so natural and yet so 
tragic to see through the eyes of the young diarist the men of 



xxviii Memorial Address 

that day stumbling forward in the darkness to conclusions of 
which they had no conception. 

Then came i860 and the fateful election of that year. 
Charles Adams had the good fortune to accompany his father 
and Mr. Seward in the latter's wide-reaching campaign tour 
in behalf of the Republican candidates. He saw the West for 
the first time, a very different West from that of to-day, 
which he also lived to see and which he helped to develop and 
build up. The scenes of that journey, the travels by land and 
water, the popular meetings and the public men he met, all 
pass vividly before us in the pages of his diary. Then it was 
that he saw Lincoln, who came to greet Seward, for the first 
time. Here again was education, not to be found in law 
books or offices, most valuable to the keen and eager mind of 
the young observer. The teachings of those days remained 
with him through life. In the Boston intervals the dull wait- 
ing for clients went on, relieved only by the "aptitude" 
which reasserted itself, found public expression in the news- 
papers, and finally in an Atlantic article upon " King Cotton " 
which had a marked success. The lurid campaign of i860 
ended. The Republicans won. The Union began to drop to 
pieces. The winter of 1860-61 dragged slowly by. Charles 
Adams watched closely the rapid march of events, striving 
hard to judge them as they passed and to guess the future 
v/hich no one could fathom, which indeed men recoiled from 
anticipating. Seward and his father, utterly declining to be- 
lieve in war, in which it is now easy to see that they were 
wrong, were laboring by every means of delay, by the con- 
sideration of impossible compromises and hopeless arrange- 
ments, to hold the Government together until the 4th of 
March, and in this effort they were absolutely right, no 



Memorial Address 



XXIX 



matter what their view of the future might have been. At 
last the day so longed for came, and Charles Adams saw 
Lincob peacefully inaugurated. He, like all Republicans 
and Union men, breathed a sigh of relief. They thought, or 
tried to think, that the worst was over. The worst, of course, 
was yet to come, but the first great danger had none the less 
been passed. The Government at last was in loyal hands. 
In the hands, too, of the greatest man of his time, although 
this fact the men of that day did not and could not know. 
Mr. Adams and his family returned to Boston. Every one 
was hoping for the best, now that the change of administra- 
tion had been safely accomplished. There came a few weeks 
of anxiety, of hope, of fear, and then the storm broke. Sum- 
ter fell and the war began. 

The immediate impulse of Charles Adams was to throw 
everything aside and go at once to the defense of the country. 
Amid the universal unreadiness for war, in which the mass of 
Americans could not believe until It was actually upon them, 
Charles Adams was better prepared than most of those about 
him. He was a member of the Fourth Battalion of the Massa- 
chusetts Militia. On the 24th of April (1861) his battalion 
was ordered to garrison duty at Fort Independence. There 
he had five weeks of real service and learned much, more 
perhaps than he realized. But he could not on the com- 
pletion of this duty make up his mind simply and directly, 
as so many of his friends did, to do that which above all 
things he desired and which in reality he was certain to do 
in the end. The strong Inheritance of Introspection asserted 
itself and for five months he struggled with himself. It was 
all so needless and yet for him so Inevitable. His patriotism, 
his courage, his high spirit, all drove him forward irresistibly. 



XXX Memorial Address 

The cold fits, the arguments In which he never believed, 
would come, would recur again and again, although each 
time more weakly. But the glow of the right and natural 
impulse burned ever stronger as the weeks passed, and at last 
one clear October afternoon as he was riding the decision 
came. "Why should I not go.?" he said to himself. The 
negative vanished In the brilliant lights and gleaming colors 
of that autumn evening. He applied for a captaincy in 
the First Massachusetts Cavalry. On the 19th of Decem- 
ber his name went in for a commission as First Lieutenant 
and on December 28, 1861, he left Boston with his regi- 
ment. 

So far as the men who made up that regiment were con- 
cerned, no better ever went to war. But to Charles Adams it 
was an unlucky choice. He was unfortunate in his superior 
officers, not merely in the two in chief command, but espe- 
cially in the one to whom he was immediately subordinate. 
No man ever went to the front with a clearer determination 
to do his full duty to the best of his ability than Charles 
Adams and no man ever kept better to his purpose. Yet he 
was treated at the outset in a way which would have driven 
many a man of good quality to desperation, to insubordina- 
tion, to resignation, perhaps to ruin. The wrong and injus- 
tice of It all were very bitter, very hard to bear. There were 
recurring hours then and later when it seemed to him that 
he had lacked manliness in submitting to what he bore and in 
not breaking through everything, even leaving the service, 
that he might preserve his self-respect. But he overcame the 
temptation which was at once so natural and so strong, and 
there is in his whole career no more convincing proof to be 
found of the fineness and strength of his character and of the 



Memorial Address xxxi 



really noble conception of duty which throughout his life 
underlay all his acts and thoughts. 

The regiment went first to South Carolina and then to Vir- 
ginia. In the autumn of 1862 he was promoted to Captain; 
he was rid of the worst torment from his immediate superior 
and light began to break. He saw constant service and was in 
many actions, always and simply brave, cool, and efficient. 
He was at Antietam and Chief of Squadron in the Gettys- 
burg campaign, then separated from his regiment on special 
duty at headquarters, and during the subsequent advance 
upon Richmond. In the autumn of 1864 he was transferred 
to the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, a colored regiment, as 
Lieutenant-Colonel, joining his new command at Point Look- 
out, Maryland. For some time he had been sufltering from 
illness caused by hardship and malaria and now became so 
much worse that in November he was ordered home. He 
grew better, rejoined his regiment once more, grew much 
worse, and was again ordered back to Boston. As the winter 
drew to a close Colonel Russell resigned and the command 
of the regiment was given to Adams. At the same time came 
the offer of a place on General Humphreys' staflt as Inspector- 
General. He esteemed Humphreys very highly and an impor- 
tant staff appointment was what he had longed for above all 
else. Nevertheless he refused the staff appointment from a 
sense of duty and obligation and took command of the regi- 
ment. He always felt that this was a grave mistake and bit- 
terly regretted it. His decision certainly deprived him of 
being present at the close of the war in the happiest manner 
and in the way which above all others he desired. Yet as one 
calmly considers his action fifty years later, while the mistake 
from his point of view may be admitted, the thought of the 



xxxii Memorial Address 

self-sacrifice to the sense of duty rouses an admiration which 
overshadows every other consideration. 

He secured the mounting of his regiment, took it to the 
front, and had the supreme satisfaction of riding at its head 
into burning Richmond the day after the abandonment of 
the city by Lee. A few weeks later he broke down again, this 
time completely, was obliged to leave the regiment and 
return to Boston reduced to a skeleton, a mere wreck from 
fever, exposure, and hardship endured for four years. He 
received the brevet of Brigadier-General, and in June, 1865, 
was mustered out of the service. He had served his country 
well in the field. He had been a good soldier, courageous and 
self-sacrificing, active and earnest in the . performance of 
every duty. It was a wonderful experience, educating, ex- 
panding, strengthening, and as he grew older he seemed to 
value it more and more. The memory never grew dim, the 
teachings of that terrible struggle of the nation for life never 
faded. His service in the war was to him a precious posses- 
sion and such in truth it was to all who had fought through 
the four years as he had done. 

While absent on sick-leave during the winter of 1864-65, 
he became engaged to Miss Ogden, the second daughter of 
Edward Ogden, of New York, then living in Newport. There 
he passed the summer of 1865 and there he was married in 
November. Immediately after the wedding he went with his 
wife to Europe. His father was still Minister to England and 
he was able to rejoin his family in London. He travelled also 
on the Continent, and the journey restored his shattered 
strength. His opportunities in England were of course excep- 
tional, but Charles Adams felt, as he was apt to feel, that he 
did not make the most of them either there or elsewhere. 



Memorial Address xxxiii 

The condition of his health no doubt interfered, but it seems 
probable that he made more of his opportunities at that time 
than he was ever willing to admit and it is certain that he saw 
and learned much. 

In September, 1866, he returned to Boston and it is not 
surprising that the prospect which he faced seemed at first 
unpromising as well as uninviting. He came back to a world 
and to conditions greatly changed from those which he had 
left five years before. From a high military command, from 
a position of responsibility and importance, he now returned 
to the obscurity of civil life, to his abandoned profession for 
which he had no love, and with no definite place, no settled 
and necessary work ready to absorb his time and satisfy or 
occupy his energies. He went back to his office and then, 
facing with clear courage and good sense the indifferent world 
about him, he set to work to establish himself, to make his 
place and to find and do something worth doing. 

He made a wise if quick choice by turning to the railroad 
system, to use his own words, " as the most developing force 
and largest field of the day." He started with an article upon 
"Railroads" in the North American Review. Clients did not 
come to his office, but articles upon railroads flowed out into 
the magazines and reviews. Gradually the steady work be- 
gan to tell, although it was not apparent as the days went by. 
Slowly but surely he was awakening his public to the vast 
importance of the railroad system growing and spreading 
rankly over a continent without either regulation or control. 
He made it apparent that this necessary servant upon which 
the development of the country depended was becoming a 
dangerous master. He demonstrated the need of action in the 
public Interest. He became an authority upon his subject. 



xxxiv Memorial Address 

The patient labor told. The " aptitude '^ in writing had found 
a field and brought in its harvest. In 1869 he delivered 
a Fourth of July address before the Grand Army Post at 
Quincy, which attracted much attention. In the same month 
the law establishing a railroad commission in Massachusetts, 
which he had been largely instrumental in passing, went into 
elTect and he was appointed one of the commissioners. On 
the first day of that same July, so memorable to him, ap- 
peared his article entitled "A Chapter of Erie," which had 
a widespread and deep political and economic effect at the 
moment and without which the history of that time could not 
now be properly written or thoroughly understood. There 
had been a " railroad commission " in Rhode Island and " rail- 
road commissioners" in New Hampshire since 1844 and sta- 
tistical returns of railroads in Massachusetts since 1836, but 
nothing had yet been accomplished in the direction of regu- 
lation or control. The Massachusetts Railroad Commission 
of 1869 was the first effective commission and was the foun- 
dation of the system of railroad commissions with large 
powers which spread to all the States and culminated in the 
Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. This 
beginning of the great system of Government regulation of 
railroads in the interest of the public was the work of Charles 
Adams. The idea, the theory, the principles, were all his, and 
the first practical demonstration, for he served ten years as 
railroad commissioner, was his also. It is not going too far 
to say that no single man produced by his own unaided 
thought and effort so great an effect upon our economic 
development, with all its attendant political manifestations, 
so far as it was involved in transportation by rail, as did 
Charles Adams when he brought about the establishment of 



Memorial Address 



XXXV 



the Massachusetts Railroad Commission and through the 
practical work of the Commission, as well as by his writings, 
educated the public to a belief in Government regulation 
and supervision of the vast system of railroads which was 
growing up in the United States. 

The " Chapter of Erie " was the crowning stroke in the work 
which he had been doing by his writings for nearly three 
years. It is difficult now even to imagine such a situation as 
is depicted In this remarkable article. Physical violence, cor- 
ruption of legislatures, corruption of courts, stock-gambling, 
robbery of the public and the stockholders, set off against a' 
background of vulgar display and coarse vice, all these foul 
things were there, not concealed but flaunted openly and fla- 
grantly, with a cynical disregard of public morals and public 
opinion. The people had looked on, disgusted and helpless. 
They saw the various villainies as they passed one by one, but 
they neither understood nor appreciated what it all meant 
until the isolated events were knit together Into a single con- 
nected story powerfully and skilfully told by Charles Adams. 
Then they knew what had happened, then they realized the 
danger which threatened them, then and there the revolt 
against railroad domination began. The foresight displayed 
m these articles is as remarkable as the grasp of facts and 
principles. But even their author could not foresee how far 
the movement, so beneficial, so necessary in Itself, and as he 
conceived It, would travel in the next fifty years. From being 
a peril and a corrupting force in politics, the railroads have 
now become the helpless subjects of Government commis- 
sions and too often their victims. The general result has been 
of the utmost value politically and in a less degree economi- 
cally. Many evils have been cured, many wrongs redressed. 



xxxvi Memorial Address 



much good has been accomplished, while serious harm has 
also been done by the crude and violent methods pursued in 
certain instances. The unfortunate stockholders have suf- 
fered under both systems. As in all revolutions — and the 
movement begun by Charles Adams in 1867 was nothing less 
— the achievement of great good, the reform of grave abuses 
brings with it suffering to guilty and innocent alike and the 
final expiation is often vicarious. Two meaner and more in- 
jurious tyrants than Louis XIV and Louis XV it would be 
difficult to find. They both had exceptionally long reigns and 
died quietly in their beds. For their sins Louis XVI, harm- 
less, dull, and kindly, went to the guillotine. Those who 
rightly feel that the treatment of our railroads by law, by 
Congress, by legislatures and commissions, is often harsh 
and unjust will do well to read the Chapters of Erie and con- 
sider the doings of Gould and Fisk. They may not find there 
an abstract justification of all the mistakes and extreme 
measures of the present day directed against the railroads, 
but they will certainly discover an ample explanation of how 
those measures came to pass. 

Just at this time, when he was bringing the labors of nearly 
three years to practical fruition by the establishment of the 
Massachusetts Railroad Commission, Charles Adams left 
Boston and made his home in the ancestral town of Quincy. 
He had been absorbed in a great state and national question, 
the transportation system of the United States, and he con- 
tinued that work for many years to come. But he now added 
to it the affairs of the town in which he lived, affairs as purely 
local as one could conceive, but which he contrived, before 
he was done with them, to carry in their influence not only 
outside the bounds of the township, but far beyond the bor- 
ders of Massachusetts. 



Memorial Address xxxvii 



With his elder brother, John Quincy Adams, who was not 
only a man of marked ability, but an accomplished speaker 
and personally very popular, he entered upon the field of 
town affairs. The general condition of the town was not 
good and there was ample opportunity for reforms in various 
directions. Alany were effected, and for twenty years the 
two brothers not only led but largely managed the town. 
The methods of doing business in town meeting were wholly 
reformed and became a model. The debt was extinguished 
and the tax rate kept at a moderate figure by wise, economi- 
cal, and effective expenditure. During these twenty years 
Charles Adams was a member of the school committee, a 
trustee of the public library, a park commissioner, and a 
commissioner of the sinking fund. He was constantly active 
in town work and never defeated when a candidate for ofiice. 
The best-known part of that work was the reform of the 
methods of teaching and administration in the public schools 
which he started and carried through. The result became 
famous as the "Quincy System," which was studied and In- 
vestigated by teachers and educators everywhere. It was 
largely followed and imitated and in this way had a wide 
influence upon education in the United States. Hardly less 
important, although less generally known, was the result of 
his work as trustee of the public library and as park commis- 
sioner. With entire justice he says in his autobiography that 
the public library given by Thomas Crane and the Merry- 
mount Park which he himself gave to the to^vn are permanent 
memorials of his work in the affairs of Quincy. No man could 
ask for better records of disinterested and unpaid public 
service than these. He also left a full account of his labors 
in Quincy In the last of his Three Episodes of Massachusetts 



xxxviii Memorial Address 

History. And yet perhaps his best monument, quite impal- 
pable and incorporeal, is the demonstration which he and his 
brother gave of the fine results which can be obtained by 
men of energy, ability, and public spirit working through the 
direct democracy of the town meeting, properly applied to 
suitable purposes, when the same energy, ability, and hon- 
esty exerted through the forms of city government so com- 
monly end in failure and so rarely achieve more than a 
partial and often merely evanescent success. 

During these years of life in Quincy the work as railroad 
commissioner went on steadily and Mr. Adams's reports, 
including that which he prepared as special commissioner on 
the Troy and Greenfield road, were all important contribu- 
tions toward the solution of the general transportation prob- 
lem. The most interesting and far-reaching of these reports 
was that of 1877, as courageous as it was able, which dealt 
with the grave questions raised by the prolonged strike of 
the engineers on the Boston & Maine Railroad. Air. Adams 
advocated investigation and publicity as against compulsory 
arbitration, and it is interesting to note that the very able 
Roosevelt Commission, called into being by the great coal 
strike more than twenty years later, adopted and enforced 
his views. In publicity and investigation, as the best method 
of dealing with the most serious troubles of this character, 
Charles Adams never lost faith. 

The work on the Massachusetts Railroad Commission, 
together with his writings, inevitably led to wider fields. In 
1878 he became chairman of the Government Directors of 
the Union Pacific and after going over the lines drew the 
report. In 1879 he resigned from the Massachusetts Com- 
mission and became chairman of the Board of Arbitration 



Memorial Address xxxix 

of the Trunk Lines. In 1882 he was chosen a director of the 
Union Pacific, and two years later was elected president of 
the company. This was a most responsible position and as 
burdensome and trying as it was important. The company 
was involved with the Government, the worst of all possible 
handicaps; it was unpopular in the territory it served and in 
very bad financial condition. During the first five years of 
his presidency Mr. Adams did much for the road. He put 
the finances in order, improved alike the service and credit 
of the road, and paid off" the floating debt. But he could not 
bring the relations with the Government to a settlement and 
that was the most serious obstacle to complete success. He 
had proved himself efficient and capable and if he had gone 
out at the end of five years all would have been well for him. 
But, as he himself says, he made the serious mistake of re- 
maining a year and a half longer, struggling in vain for the 
Government settlement which always fled as he approached 
it. During those fateful eighteen months the clouds in the 
business world which culminated in the great panic of 1893, 
were gathering darkly upon the horizon. At that time Charles 
Adams was deeply involved in other and extensive enter- 
prises of his own, and as conditions constantly grew worse 
both the road and its president suffered from them. At last, 
in 1890, he wrenched himself free, not without large personal 
sacrifice, and his twenty years of railroad work came to an 
end, leaving with him at the time a bitter sense of failure. 
But the failure, if it was such, was in reality confined to the 
last year and a half in the Union Pacific, when the general 
financial situation, continually growing worse, brought ruin 
to many men and many enterprises. The eighteen preceding 
years were a success in the largest sense, because during those 



xl Memorial Address 



years he did a work toward the solution of the vast railroad 
question, informing and educating public opinion, which 
stands out conspicuous in the history of the time and which 
was one of his best and most enduring achievements. 

Yet the work in Quincy, the labors as railroad commis- 
sioner, then as a member of the Arbitration Board, as direc- 
tor and president of the Union Pacific, together with large 
business affairs in which he was privately engaged, although 
they would seem beyond the strength of any one man, by no 
means comprised all the public service rendered at that period 
and later by Charles Adams. In 1872 he went at the head of 
a commission authorized by the Massachusetts Legislature 
to visit the Vienna Exposition and drew the report of the 
commissioners. In 1892 he was appointed chairman of the 
preliminary and advisory commission to prepare a plan of 
parks and public reservations for Boston and its vicinity. 
The result was a scheme for a park system probably un- 
equalled in extent and In far-sighted conception by any great 
city of modem times. Greatly to the surprise of Mr. Adams 
the report was accepted and he was made chairman of the 
commission created to carry the plans into effect. He served 
until 1895, and then, feeling that his work in this direction 
was completed, he resigned. The preservation of the Blue 
Hills and of the Middlesex Fells by Including them In reser- 
vations was largely due to his efforts, and he justly felt that 
he had accomplished much in saving those regions of re- 
markable natural beauty not only for the public of his own 
day, but for the generations yet unborn. Those, who in the 
long days to come will find enjoyment and happiness In the 
regions thus preserved from the ravages of the spoiler, may 
not know to whose hand they owe the precious gift, but none 



Memorial Address xH 



the less the hills and woods and lakes thus saved are a great 
and lasting memorial to the man whose disinterested and 
far-seeing labors made them a permanent possession of the 
people of Massachusetts. 

In 1897 Charles Adams was appointed chairman of a 
Massachusetts commission to investigate the relations be- 
tween street railways and municipalities. For this purpose 
he visited Europe to inquire into the different systems in 
operation there and in Great Britain, and on his return he 
drew the report upon which general legislation was based 
and enacted. In 1903 he served as chairman of a special 
commission to apportion the cost of maintenance of the 
parks and reservations among the several cities and towns 
included in the system. 

During this entire period he was also active in another and 
very different field. In 1882 he was chosen an overseer of 
Hari-ard College and served there four terms of six years 
each with an interval of one year in 1895. His deep interest 
as an educational reformer, so strikingly shown in the schools 
of Quincy, he now turned to the methods and modes of teach- 
ing in the great university. In 1883 he delivered the Phi 
Beta Kappa address entitled "A College Fetish," which was 
directed against the classics, and not only attracted much 
attention, but excited abundant criticism and discussion 
which Charles Adams always enjoyed. From that time for- 
ward, for nearly a quarter of a century, he was most active 
m all the affairs of Harvard, concluding his many years of 
service by an elaborate report on the English Department 
which was followed by Important changes in the English 
courses of the university. 
As one comes to the end of this long list of activities in 



xlii Memorial Address 

public service and with public results, supplemented by busi- 
ness interests enough in themselves to absorb the entire men- 
tal and physical strength of a man of more than average vigor 
of mind and body, one pauses in surprise at the force, energy, 
and capacity for work which made it all possible, and yet 
even this was not everything. Through all there ran the 
"aptitude" for expression in writing, and not content with 
the articles in magazines and newspapers or the elaborate 
reports dealing with the educational, economic, and railroad 
reforms upon which he was engaged, the "aptitude" reached 
out and turned to the inviting fields of history and biography, 
subjects for which Charles Adams, quite unknown to himself 
at first, possessed another strong gift which was his both by 
nature and inheritance. In 1874 he was asked to deliver an 
historical address at the celebration of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the towTi of Wey- 
mouth, next neighbor to Quincy. He knew but little of 
Weymouth; nothing of its history. After a brief hesitation he 
accepted and delivered the address on the 4th of July, 1874. 
His work as an historian had begun. The Weymouth address 
was followed by his election as a member of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society, lightly accepted at the moment, but 
which was destined to mean so much to him in a future then 
long distant. The Weymouth address, however, did much 
more than this. It led him insensibly into the pleasant 
paths of historical study and investigation. He came, per- 
haps without realizing it, well equipped for the new pursuit. 
From the earliest beginnings in the days of the college and 
the law office he wrote easily and well. He seems never to 
have passed through the severe struggle necessary to most 
men when learning to express themselves in writing with 



Memorial Address xliii 

force and lucidity. Yet the old saying that easy writing 
makes hard reading does not apply in his case. All that 
Charles Adams wrote is eminently readable. He had no faith 
in the elaborate, no patience with what was dry or obscure. 
He was strongly of Alartial's opinion: 

Non scribit, cujus carmina nemo legit. 

One might agree or disagree with his opinions, but no one 
found difficulty in either reading or understanding what he 
wrote. Rarely rhetorical, his style was always clear and 
effective. The humor of a situation when he described it 
did not escape him if it was anywhere present, nor did he 
ever fail to see the pathos or the tragedy when either existed 
or the remote results of the events of history or of the deeds 
of men. He had also another quality in a high degree of 
excellence which is very essential to the historian. This was 
the power of developing and weaving together a closely con- 
nected and interesting narrative from a mass of complicated 
and disorderly facts and of intricate, widely scattered details. 
In the Chapters of Erie, which were the first of his writmgs 
to attain to book form, in a volume of essays by himself and 
his brother Henry, this power is made very manifest. The 
literary quality in this respect is as admirable as the sub- 
stance of the attack upon the infamies of the Erie Railroad 
management. From a wilderness of details, from masses of 
testimony, judicial orders, and newspaper reports, he drew 
forth a clear, succinct, coherent, easily understood, and also 
keenly interesting story. The ability to do this implies not 
only patient and untiring industry, but skill and proficiency 
in the difficult arts of selection, compression, and omission. 
To the work of the historian Charles Adams brought this 



xl i V Memorial Address 

ability, and the thoroughness of research and the mastery of 
details were as conspicuous as the easy and vivacious man- 
ner in which the results of his labors were finally stated upon 
the printed page. Following the lead of the Weymouth 
address, he extricated from the confused and too often 
broken records of the seventeenth century, the story of the 
earliest English settlements of Massachusetts Bay, which 
was first printed privately in 1883 as Episodes in New Eng- 
land History, and later, in 1892, in two volumes entitled 
Three Episodes of Massachusetts History. There is much in 
the records of those times which seems petty if carelessly 
regarded. The figures on the scene are for the most part 
obscure men, moving dimly on the edge of a vast, untrodden 
wilderness. Yet when looked at, as Charles Adams looked 
at them, with a discerning gaze, it is apparent that adven- 
ture and romance were both present and, when they are, the 
names and importance of the heroes are of secondary conse- 
quence, for romance and adventure do not depend upon the 
worldly position of the actors in making their appeal to hu- 
man imagination and human interest. Isolated and alone 
these early wanderers to the New England coast might well 
have had no other charm than this, but as it happened they 
were also founders of a State, beginners of great things, fac- 
tors in world events, and their connection with the larger 
history of their own time and of the future was brought out 
by Charles Adams in a way which makes the deeper meanings 
of these Pilgrims and adventurers clear and emphatic to all 
who read their story as he told it. 

This work went with Charles Adams through all the period 
of railroad and business activity and was a resource and com- 
fort in the disappointments and trials which came with the 



Memorial Address xlv 

successes in practical affairs. During the last months of his 
■presidency of the Union Pacific, when all the many anxieties 
of the road and of his own business interests were culminat- 
ing, he none the less managed in some way, not easily com- 
prehensible, to write the biography of his old friend Richard 
H. Dana, in whose office he had studied law. Just as he left 
the railroad and regained once more the ■'"reedom from the 
care and responsibility which the presidency of the road had 
brought upon him, the book was published. There is nothing 
in its pages to suggest the wearing conditions under which it 
was composed, an indication of a rare capacity for self-ab- 
straction and for applying the mind to the subject which the 
will commands. It is a wholly admirable piece of work, vivid, 
interesting, one of the very best of American biographies. 
It merits more than the credit of an important contribution 
to our history; it is also an addition to our literature. 

From this time forward the "aptitude," finding its truest 
field in history, gave to Charles Adams his principal interest 
and his chief occupation, one which was entirely congenial. 
There were five hard years to be passed through while he 
dealt with the burdens which the railroad and his own affairs, 
involved in the great business depression between 1893 and 
1897, brought upon him. He gave up Boston and Quincy 
and established himself upon a large estate at Lincoln. 
There his time at last became his own and he turned to his- 
tory and historical studies, where, in the midst of other and 
very different labors, he had already done so much. 

During the twenty-five years which followed his retire- 
ment from the presidency of the Union Pacific, he published, 
in addition to many noticeable and much noticed addresses, 
historical and otherwise. The Life of R. II. Dana and The 



xlvi Memorial Address 

Three Episodes oj Massachusetts History, already mentioned; 
Massachusetts; Its Historians and History, in 1 893 ; a memoir, 
all too brief, of his father, in 1900; a volume of Studies: Mili- 
tary and Diplomatic, in 191 1, and in 1913, in book form, the 
lectures delivered at Oxford and later at Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity entitled Transatlantic Historical Solidarity. This last 
volume represented part of the study he was making with his 
usual thoroughness and industry of the diplomatic history 
of our Civil War. He had gathered an immense mass of orig- 
inal material for this purpose and was constantly accumu- 
lating more, upon which he was occupied at the time of his 
death. 

In addition to all this original production, with its wide 
historical research, he found time to edit for the Prince So- 
ciety in 1883, during the railroad period, Thomas Morton's 
New English Canaan, in 1894 the Winthrop-Weld tract on 
Antinomianism in New England, and later gave much assist- 
ance in the preparation of the Historical Society's monu- 
mental edition of Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 
which appeared in 19 12. This edition of Bradford, suggested 
by Mr. Adams in 1 898, was but one of many things that he did 
for the Society which filled a large place in his life for twenty 
years. He was chosen a vice-president in 1890 when he left 
the Union Pacific, and in 1895 he was elected president to 
succeed Dr. Ellis. He came to his new duties, as he had come 
to all the positions he had ever filled, with an abundance of 
fresh ideas and in the spirit of the reformer. He not only 
worked for and helped the Society in every possible way, he 
not only brought to it and expended In Its service unbounded 
energy and enthusiasm, but he enlarged Its field, increased 
its usefulness, and made it more of a power In history, lltera- 



Memorial Address xl 



XlVll 



ture, and In the community, than it had ever been before. 
The bane of all learned societies, historical, antiquarian, or 
scientific, is the tendency to see only the trees and not the 
forest, the houses and not the city. They are too apt to forget 
that one fact is gossip and that two related facts are history. 
All persons of healthy minds love gossip, whether oral or 
written, if It is clever, humorous, and suggestive. That is an 
attribute of human nature and is due to the fact that good 
gossip has the quality of the story, the touch of romance, the 
appeal to the imagination. But it is a perilous mistake to 
suppose that all gossip, good or bad, dull or amusing, that all 
facts, simply as facts, are of value. The result of this error 
when indulged in is the heaping up of unread pages of facts 
of no value at the time of their existence or at any subsequent 
period. Mere age does not give a fact importance. Some- 
thing more is needed, and the tenderness which we all feel 
for that which the centuries have spared should not blind us 
to its intrinsic worth or worthlessness, which is the only real 
question to be determined. Diamonds and pearls are no 
doubt to be found now and then on the rubbish-heaps of the 
past, but the mounds are none the less rubbish as they were 
from the beginnmg, and their final resting-place should be 
not the printed, gently preserving page, but the fire or the 
dust-bin, even If a precious stone, happily rescued, should 
have once glittered among them. 

With this vice of collecting valueless facts purely because 
they were old, and then encumbering not only shelves but 
the limited time of finite humanity with endless volumes of 
printed paper, Charles Adams was very familiar and equally 
unsympathetic. This in itself made him peculiarly fit for the 
president's place In an historical society. But he did much 



xlviii Memorial Address 



more. He carried the work of the Society out of the Colonial 
Period, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where it 
had been too much and too long confined, and brought the 
nineteenth century, and especially the period of the Civil 
War, within the scope of its communications, investigations, 
and monthly consideration. Not content with this extension 
he led the Society into still wider fields of history by his own 
addresses and essays, which ranged from the battle of Salamis 
to the current events of the day and which greatly enlivened 
and adorned the volumes of the Proceedings. His generous 
gifts to the Society were never lacking, but the greatest gift 
of all was his own untiring energy and enthusiasm; the way 
in which he asserted, developed, and maintained the position 
of the Society as an influence and power in literature and his- 
torical research. 

The removal from Quincy to Lincoln proved in all ways 
fortunate. He genuinely enjoyed the country life and the new 
occupations which his estate aflforded. He became a bene- 
factor, too, of his new town as he had been in the old home 
of his family. Journeys to Europe were interspersed as the 
years went by, and in 1905 he purchased a house in Washing- 
ton and thenceforth passed his winters there. That change, 
too, was a fortunate and a happy one. He liked Washington. 
The varied society, the people from all parts of the United 
States and from foreign lands whom he met, interested and 
amused him. The climate was more genial than that of 
Massachusetts and there were few days when he could not 
walk and have his daily ride, which he kept up steadily until 
the very end. These last twenty years were, I am sure, very 
happy ones. The cares and anxieties of his railroad and 
business life were all behind him. The crushing burdens 



Memorial Address xlix 



which came after he left the Union Pacific were disposed of 
and Hfted from his shoulders. He was constantly occupied 
with work which he keenly enjoyed, work worth doing, and 
which he had the satisfaction of knowing was well done, 
and the natural "aptitude" had at last full and unrestricted 
opportunity. His physical and mental vigor remained unim- 
paired to a degree which made it impossible to realize the 
number of his years. He was spared the trials of gradual 
decay which age so often brings. He escaped the fate which 
above all others he would have dreaded and resented: 

To hang 
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
In monumental mockery. 

In the full tide of activity and work. Instinct with Interest In 
life, he was seized with pneumonia; a few days of illness and 
the end came on the 20th of March, only two months before 
his eightieth birthday. To him was given the good fortune, 
which usually comes alone to youth untimely taken, of leav- 
ing In the lives of those who knew and admired and loved 
him, as well as of those who were nearest and dearest to him, 
a gap which never can be filled. 

In such fashion this career so crowded with work, with 
public service, with achievements of many kinds, came to 
the inevitable close. What shall be said of the man himself 
who had a career so striking and who In such a vivid and ear- 
nest manner lived the life of his time, who exercised so much 
Influence upon the community of which he was a part and in 
various ways upon the thought and the development of his 
country.? How shall we approach any attempt to judge him 
and his work.? Charles Adams would have been the first 
to agree with Drummond, of Hawthomden^ "That there is 



1 Memorial Address 



nothing lighter than mere praise." In his admirable biog- 
raphies, in all his historical writings, when he deals with 
those who have played their part upon the stage of life and 
then have gone from among us, he never treads the beaten 
paths of eulogy and undiscriminating panegyric. He would, 
I am sure, resent any failure to follow his own precepts and 
example, when those who honored and admired him came to 
speak of him after his work was done. As we may learn from 
his autobiography, he judged himself far more severely, far 
more harshly one may often say, than any dispassionate 
critic would think of doing. Rarely does he express satisfac- 
tion with anything he did. Constantly does he point out 
where he had failed to reach the standard he desired, and the 
censure of himself for lost opportunities recurs, often quite 
unjustly, as it seems to me, again and again. His aims were 
very high, very large; like most effective men he fell short of 
his own ideals, like most men who make anything he made 
mistakes. But he overrated the number of lost opportunities 
and he underrated his own successes. He was very modest in 
his judgment upon all that he did himself, but it must be con- 
fessed that he was equally modest in his judgment of other 
people, an attitude often mistaken for self-satisfaction when 
in reality it implies nothing of the sort. This was eminently 
true of Charles Adams, who was wholly free from small 
conceits and petty self-complacencies. No one can read his 
autobiography and fail to see that so far as he personally was 
concerned he was humble-minded; but when he analyzed or 
criticised any man, whether that man was historical or con- 
temporary, he dealt with him as he dealt with himself — 
unsparingly, rarely with any illusions, but always as fairly 
as he could. He fully intended to be simply just in judgment. 



Memorial Address H 

for malice, jealousy, or uncharitableness had no existence in 
his nature. 

In reviewing his life one is struck most by the extent and 
variety of his activities and filled with wonder that any man 
had the really enormous energy, both mental and physical, 
necessary to undertake and to accomplish so much. He felt 
himself that he had attempted to do too many things and 
had expended his efforts in too many directions. As a rule, 
no doubt, the greatest reputations and the greatest results, 
both in fame and accomplishment, have been obtained by 
the concentration of a man's powers upon a single object; but 
this in no way detracts from the effectiveness of the work or 
the credit due to one who has had a large measure of success 
and of high usefulness in many different fields of thought 
and action, as was the case with Charles Adams. His energy 
may have spent itself on too many objects, but it was never 
fruitless, and to whatever subject he turned he left his mark 
and a deep impress behind him. His varied interests and 
incessant labors in many directions were very different from 
the mere restlessness which flits here and there, touching 
everything without adorning anything, and effecting nothing. 
His labors may have been, they were, indeed, very diverse, 
but they were never in vain. 

Next to the extent and variety of his activities that which 
is most arresting is the fact that in all he undertook he never 
entered upon the one field for which, by strong inheritance 
as well as by natural capacity, he would seem to have been 
most peculiarly fitted. Statesmanship, politics in the largest 
sense, diplomacy, were with him bred in the bone, were an 
instinct rather than an inborn tendency or inclination. Yet 
he never made any effort toward a public life in the ordinary 



Hi Memorial Address 

and restricted sense. He certainly never sought, it seems as 
if he never even desired, pubUc office, either political or dip- 
lomatic, although by inheritance and natural endowments 
he was so remarkably suited for both. He took a deep inter- 
est in politics and was entirely conversant with them both 
at home and abroad. He understood all political questions 
thoroughly, far better than most of those who are imme- 
diately engaged in them. He was intensely patriotic, pro- 
foundly American; he performed all the duties of a citizen at 
all times, but he never became a public man himself in the 
accepted meaning of the term, although he demonstrated 
by his life that public service of the highest kind could be 
rendered without holding public office. In the work he did 
he influenced public thought and the development of his 
country; he left in our great railroad system, in education, in 
our park systems, in our history and literature, substantial 
results, monuments of labors far more beneficent and en- 
during than those achieved by most men who have official 
titles appended to their names, in catalogues and dictiona- 
ries. He held strong political views and never hesitated to 
express them at elections great and small. He was an inde- 
pendent in politics, not the kind which always votes against 
and opposes one party without admitting that they belong to 
the other, but a genuine independent, voting for and support- 
ing the candidacy and the principles which he believed un- 
der existing conditions were best for the public welfare. His 
opinions and views were sharply and publicly expressed in 
all contests over public questions of any importance and had 
a wide influence because of his real independence and entire 
sincerity. Those who differed from him never questioned 
his disinterestedness or the complete absence of self-seeking. 



Memorial Address liii 

which was so marked in all he did. Strongly as his opinions 
were held and expressed, he always could put himself in 
the other man's place, understand his position, and do him 
justice without an air of self-righteousness or any touch of 
illiberallty. And yet, despite this knowledge of politics, this 
inborn aptitude for public affairs, as I have just said, he never 
sought or held any public office dependent upon political 
elections or political appointment. Those which he accepted 
came to him without any political reason and solely because 
he was the man above all others in the town or State fitted 
to perform a particular and important public service. 

The reason that he never sought the higher public offices, 
that he never tried to take the place which seemed in all 
ways to belong to him in the broad and inviting field of 
national politics at home, and the still wider field of interna- 
tional politics abroad for which he was so especially adapted, 
is to be found, I think, in what he himself calls at the outset 
his "individualism." At a later day, in a very interesting 
address at the Hawthorne centenary, he said, "I am, also, 
naturally inclined to be otherwise-minded, and a bit icono- 
clastic." This is what he meant, when describing his boy- 
hood, by "individualism," more clearly and expressively 
stated; and here is to be discovered, I think, the cause of his 
entire abstention from any effort to follow in the footsteps of 
his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, which 
had carried them to the summits both in public service and 
in history. To"be "otherwise-minded" both naturally and in 
practice leads, in the case of a man of original thought and 
high ability, to much achievement on his part and to a strong 
and stimulating influence of great value to the community. 
But this quality, like all marked attributes, has, if not its 



liv Memorial Address 

defect, the necessity of sacrifice in some other direction. 
It makes it difiicult for its possessor to work with other men 
on a large scale. In the many commissions upon which 
Charles Adams served his relations with his colleagues were 
always pleasant and harmonious in the fullest sense. But 
these colleagues were few and his leadership and superiority, 
so far as their especial work was concerned, were entirely 
and readily acknowledged. When he was brought into rela- 
tions with larger numbers of colleagues and associates with 
whom it was necessary to act in furtherance of a common 
purpose, as in the case of the Union Pacific, we have but to 
read what he says in this connection of the financial mag- 
nates and business men with whom he came in contact in 
order to realize the difficulties he found in the manage- 
ment of varying opinions and in taking joint action where 
many men were involved. In politics this necessity for 
cooperation, not only with many others but with large bod- 
ies and groups of men, is greatly increased, to a degree in 
fact surpassing that of any other form of human activity. 
Politics are carried on, among English-speaking people at 
least, through the instrumentality of parties. Parties are 
composed of thousands, of millions of men, indeed, who are 
agreed upon certain general principles and certain broad 
policies, but who of necessity differ widely among them- 
selves as to details, often of a very serious character, and 
also as to those who are to be selected to represent and lead 
the party. To attain success not only are much patience 
and a readiness always to subordinate the lesser to the 
higher and larger purpose demanded, but also a willingness 
to compromise details in order to obtain united action, as 
well as to accept at times not merely a half loaf, but even 



Memorial Address Iv 

a quarter or less with a view to an ultimate result and to a 
further advance in the future. These sacrifices of individu- 
ality Charles Adams did not care to make, felt, perhaps, that 
he could not make them. He preferred to exercise his influ- 
ence and his powers for the furtherance of the great and useful 
ends he sought, in other ways, and he therefore shunned or 
at least never tried to enter the wider and more conspicuous 
fields of public life and service, for which by inheritance, 
training, and talents he was so remarkably adapted. But if 
his individualism, in his own opinion, prevented his entrance 
upon the field which seemed so peculiarly his own, it was at 
the same time the source of his power, of his influence, and 
of his success in the many others where he played a most 
distinguished part. For his "otherwise-mindedness," to use 
his own homely and most picturesque phrase, was, it must 
always be remembered, a quality far removed from the 
empty love of facile paradox. We have had of late years, if 
not here, at least in England, a group — it might almost be 
called a school — of paradox-makers who have achieved a 
now fading notoriety and who have certainly ardently ad- 
mired each other. In the trick of paradox, no doubt, some 
cleverness has been shown and some passing amusement ex- 
cited. But at bottom the whole business is shallow, and, like 
all tricks constantly repeated, becomes tiresome. A paradox 
is merely an inverted platitude or truism. If a string of plati- 
tudes wearies, the same collection inverted, after the short- 
lived novelty of inversion wears ofl", becomes even more in- 
tolerable, because the truism is, as a rule, true, while the 
paradox is not, and in the long run truth is a better com- 
panion than falsehood. If a man stands on his head in the 
street, he is sure to attract momentary attention, but he is 



Ivi Memorial Address 

less desirable, less easy to live with, and far less useful than 
those who pass by about their business in the normal and 
unnoticeable position of the human biped. With the pro- 
fessional paradox in all its tiresome futility and melancholy 
vacuity, the " otherwise-mindedness " of Charles Adams had 
no relation whatever. Still less had it any resemblance, not 
even the most remote, to cheap cynicism or to an artificial 
pose. He saw with clear vision what was defective, what 
was wrong, as he believed, in his own times and in his own 
country, but he did not on that account hold up with fac- 
titious admiration some long dead century, or some foreign 
country as an ideal where all was perfect, for he knew that 
such perfection existed nowhere and that the bygone cen- 
tury and the foreign country had their defects and their 
wrongs, which, if not worse than those of his own time and 
of his own land, were certainly quite as bad. He was not a 
pessimist, and professional pessimism had, for him, no at- 
traction On the other hand he had no patience with " the 
barren, optimistic sophistries of comfortable moles," for the 
instinct of the reformer was strong within him. He saw 
life steadily and saw it whole, he knew that it was a tan- 
gled web in which the strands of evil and good both min- 
gled, and to him It seemed a duty to tear out the one and 
preserve the other. This he could not have done had he 
not sanely recognized the existence of both. 

The "otherwise-mindedness" of Charles Adams was In 
reality independent and often original thought as to all the 
conditions which he met. Whether it was in education or 
railroad systems, in literature or politics, in life or history, 
his Instinct was to question the accepted system or the ac- 
cepted view, and if he thought It harmful or erroneous he 



Memorial Address Ivii 

set himself to correct it. This spirit of questioning, of divine 
discontent, which is not satisfied with mere ineffective snarl- 
ing, but which seeks always a practical result, is the spirit 
which has saved the world from stagnation, which has lifted 
man from the shell-heaps and the cave-dwellings to the place 
which for good or ill he occupies to-day. This was the spirit 
of Charles Adams. He always expressed his views or opinions 
with uncompromising vigor so that every one took notice of 
them and no one failed to understand them. When con- 
vinced that he had made a mistake he admitted it with the 
same uncompromising clearness. I have been reminded more 
than once by his confession of some error, of the story of 
Dr. Johnson, who replied, when a lady asked him why he 
had wrongly defined the word "pastern," — "Ignorance, 
Madam, pure ignorance." The same blunt sincerity, the 
same absolute honesty of mind, was eminently character- 
istic of Charles Adams. He stated his opinions with all the 
force of absolute conviction, and he was equally direct and 
outspoken if he was satisfied that he was mistaken, or if 
further reflection or new facts led him to change his mind. 
Disagreement he was sure to arouse and intended to do so. 
But whether he went too far or not, whether he was wholly 
right or measurably wrong, in practical affairs he wrought 
improvements and brought progress; in history, if he did 
not always change the accepted opinion, he caused men to 
review and reconsider their judgment in the interests of 
truth. In whatever he did throughout his long, active, and 
distinguished career he was always a stimulating and up- 
lifting influence. To his questioning spirit backed by his 
energy, his love of practical results, his readiness to under- 
stand the positions of other men from whom he difltered, he 



1 viii Memorial Address 

owed his success and all that he accomplished for his State 
and country, for American letters and for American history. 
He underrated his own measure of success, as it seems to me, 
but he judged himself and his career in a singularly dispas- 
sionate way. At the close of his autobiography he says: 

Finally I want to say that preparing this resume has been for 
me a decidedly profitable use of time. It has caused me to re- 
view, to weigh, and to measure. As a result of that process, I 
feel I have no cause of complaint with the world. I have been 
a remarkably, an exceptionally, fortunate man. I have had 
health, absence of death, dissipation, and worthlessness In my 
family, with no overwhelming calamity to face and subside 
under; and the world has taken me for all I was fairly worth. 
Looking back, and above all, in reading that destroyed diary of 
mine, I see with tolerable clearness my own limitations. I was 
by no means what I in youth supposed myself to be. As to 
opportunity, mine seems to have been infinite. No man could 
ask for better chances. In a literary way, financially, politi- 
cally, I might have been anything, had It only been In me. The 
capacity, not the occasion, has been wanting. It was so In the 
army; It was so In railroads, in politics, and In business; it was 
so in literature and history. In one and all my limitations made 
themselves felt; most of all, in the law. On the other hand, my 
abilities, as ability goes in this world, have been considerable; 
never first-rate, but more than respectable. They have enabled 
me to accomplish what I have accomplished; and I have accom- 
plished something. 

... In other directions also I have, perhaps, accomplished 
nothing considerable, compared with what my three Immediate 
ancestors accomplished; but, on the other hand, I have done 
some things better than they ever did; and, what Is more and 
most of all, I have had a much better time In life — got more 
enjoyment out of it. In this respect I would not change with 
any of them. 



Memorial Address 1 i 



IX 



This brief extract, which will be read in the future with 
its context, as it ought to be if it is to be fully understood, 
seems to me very illuminating. It shows to any one who 
will consider it carefully that Charles Adams was, as I 
have said, essentially humble-minded as to himself and that 
he was disposed to underestimate his own success and 
achievements. But it also shows that he was in the high- 
est degree honest-minded. He meant to give himself full 
credit even when he judged himself most harshly. He hated 
shams, he looked truth and facts squarely in the face, and 
he shrank from neither. Boasting was as alien to him as 
repining. These are very noble intellectual qualities. There 
are, indeed, none finer, none which should more command 
the imitation and respect of men. 

With these qualities of mind in Charles Adams the moral 
qualities fully corresponded. The highest sense of honor, the 
most absolute moral integrity, were so completely his, so 
accepted by all as a matter of course, that in his life no one 
thought it necessary even to allude to them; but when we 
speak of him in commemoration they must find their place 
upon the printed page for the benefit of those who will only 
know him there. He was a man of the highest courage, both 
moral and physical, and of the purest patriotism. He ser\'ed 
his country in the field through four years of war. There he 
might have paused with the consciousness that the duty 
and the debt which all men owe their country had been fully 
paid. But for that debt and that duty there was for him 
no full payment possible. He continued to render public 
service in many ways until the day of his death. 

In the same fashion he sought to serve his fellow-men, not 
only in the wide sense of the public, but the individual man 



Ix Memorial Address 

and woman. He was generous, he liked to be helpful. He 
was a good friend, although he made few professions, and so 
loyal that he found disloyalty hard to comprehend. Under 
a manner somewhat brusque, sometimes abrupt, was con- 
cealed one of the kindest, most affectionate hearts that ever 
beat, and how tender his sympathy could be those to whom 
it went out know well. 

The uppermost thought, the keenest feeling, in the minds 
of all who knew him is pervaded by the sense of personal 
loss and of personal sorrow. One lingers reluctant by the 
closing door which shuts him out from the present and 
leaves him with his great ancestors as a figure in our history. 
As we turn away, this final word may at least be said. The 
world is torn with war, tortured with pain and anguish, 
oppressed with dark forebodings. Many dangerous and diffi- 
cult questions confront our beloved country. But the fact 
that we as a people can still bring forth, can still honor, still 
be influenced and helped by a man of the character, ideals, 
and aspirations of Charles Adams, must give us hope in the 
present and confidence in the years that are yet to be. 

The Horatian lines, so old, so familiar, so beautiful, come 
unsought to the memory because they can be said of Charles 
Adams without reservation and in all the simplicity of 
truth: 

Justum ac tenacem propositi virum, 
Non civlum ardor prava jubentium, 
Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster 
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae, 
Nee fulminantis magna manus Jovis: 
Si fractus illabatur orbis 
Impavidum ferient ruinae. 



Charles Francis Adams 

1835-1915 

(jy4'w (^Autobiography 



^ Charles Francis Adams ?^ 

AN AUrOBIOGRAPHT 



I 

YOUTH AND EDUCATION 

Shakespeare causes Falstaff to tell Chief Justice Gas- 
coigne, in a certain familiar interview, that he "was bom 
about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, 
and something a round belly." ^ No character of that period 
lives for us now quite so distinctly and in the flesh as Shake- 
speare's creation, and we must skip a hundred and seventy- 
five years before coming to another, this time one who 
really lived, moved and had his being, but who to-day is 
as much a presence in the world of the past as Sir John 
Falstaff. That battle of Shrewsbury in which Shakespeare 
makes Falstaff figure occurred July 21, 1403; so it is fair to 
presume that Falstaff, had he come into the world at all, 
would have made his appearance in it at "about three of 
the clock in the afternoon" of some day in the year 1360 — 
there or thereabouts. Michel de Montaigne, the succeeding 
vivid individuality referred to, has recorded the exact hour 
when he was bom, "betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in 
the forenoon, the last of February, 1533." 2 It so happens 
that, owing to the fact of my father's keeping a diary, I can 
fix the exact hour of my birth as definitely as did either Fal- 
staff or Montaigne. I came into this world in a house on 
^ 2 King Henry IF, i, 2. « Essays, Book i, ch. xix. 



Charles Francis Adams 



Hancock Avenue, as the narrow footway on the right-hand 
side of the statue of Horace Mann, west of the State-House 
grounds in Boston is still designated, between nine and 
eleven p.m. of the 27th of May, 1835. My father and mother 
had passed the winter at the house of my grandfather, 
Peter C. Brooks, on Pearl Street; but, on the nth of May 
they had moved up to Hancock Avenue, their own house, 
with a view to the approaching event. In my father's diary 
of that period there is a reference which fixes another and, 
to the generality, far more interesting date. Quincy gran- 
ite was then in great vogue. On the 27th of April my father 
went out to Quincy, and up to the Old Granite Railway in 
Milton, on business connected with leasing some quarry 
lands, and he there "observed some beautiful specimens 
which are in process of sculpture for the new hotel of Mr. 
Astor in New York." These were the familiar Astor House 
monoliths, until recently so conspicuous a landmark In the 
architecture of Broadway. 

The period of childhood, and school and college days of 
any man, no matter how considerable, are not a profitable 
field on which to dilate; and yet, after all, as Wordsworth 
has said: "The child is father of the man," and, for the au- 
tobiographer, if he only knows how to deal with them, the 
recollections of early life and education, told in the light of 
experience, carry about as useful lessons as any of riper 
years; If, indeed, they do not carry some far more useful. As 
the twig is bent, the tree inclines ; I know this has been so 
in my case, and my youth and education now seem to me 
to have been a skilfully arranged series of mistakes, first on 
the part of others and then on my own part. 

During all my earlier years my father and mother were 



Youth and Education 



living very quietly in Boston and Quincy, and there they 
continued to live until, in 1859, my father went into active 
public life. I was then twenty-four years old. Previous to 
that great, and blessed, break, they were always at home, 
never even going to Europe — not a small thing in those 
days — and, until, in 1853, 1 went to college, I lived at home. 
It was just the sort of bringing-up I ought not to have had. 
The Boston life of those days was simple, and, in many re- 
spects, not bad; but it was distinctly provincial and self- 
complacent. Until 1842 my father lived on in the Hancock 
Avenue house. He then moved to the house he subsequently 
occupied as a winter residence during forty-five years. No. 
57 Mt. Vernon Street, nearly opposite the head of Walnut 
Street, a vamped-up dwelling, the purchase and occupation 
of which were highly characteristic of the man. Bought 
by my grandfather, Peter C. Brooks, for his daughter, my 
mother, the house had been built in the early part of the 
century, and in the way then usual. Subsequently It had 
been re-modelled, and a little elementary plumbing and 
heating apparatus forced bodily into It; but, unfortunately. 
It contained one large and handsome room on the second 
floor into which the sun poured, and which occupied the 
entire front. The only really desirable room in the house, 
my father fixed on it for his library regardless of other con- 
siderations. So the house was bought for my mother, and 
In It I grew up. That house threw a shadow across my whole 
early life. I well remember my disappointment at its aspect 
the first time I ever rang the door-bell — a boy of seven. 
And when, forty-seven years later — my mother having 
died and the house having been emptied of everything — I 
crossed the threshold for the last time, and turned the key 



Charles Francis Adams 



in the door, I walked away with a distinct sense of relief, 
thanking God that chapter was closed. I have not a single 
pleasant recollection associated with No. 57 Mt. Vernon 
Street. There hangs about it, stretching through a memory 
covering long years, a monotonous atmosphere of winter 
gloom. 

It was not so with Quincy, our summer, as well as im- 
memorial family home. Quincy was associated in my mind 
with spring and summer — bright skies, open windows, 
green fields, singing birds, the blue bay with white sails dot- 
ting it, and a distant view over a country rolling into great 
whale-back hills, with the State-House dome on the horizon. 
Boston was gloom personified, frost, snow and discomfort; 
short days and long school-hours ; wet, cold feet, and evening 
lessons. In those days — 1 840-1 853 — Quincy was by no 
means a bad place in which to grow up. A Massachusetts 
country town, it had not altogether outgrown the colonial 
period, it still savored of the past. The famous Quincy 
granite quarries had been opened some years before, and 
already, physically and morally, had worked the place mani- 
fest injury; but their far-reaching destructive influence was 
not made fully manifest. In point of fact, though it would 
hardly now be imagined, Quincy was in a natural way more 
richly endowed than any other region adjacent to Boston. 
Lying on the seaward slope of the Blue Hill range, without 
being a seaboard place It stretched for miles along the shores 
of Boston Bay, with the rocky and picturesque Squantum 
headland at one extremity and the Great Hill and Fore 
River at the other. The hills at the west and north offered 
residential sites of the choicest character, since gutted for 
the stone that underlay them, and now converted into an 



Touth and Education 



7 



abomination of desolation. The passage of ten thousand 
years could not restore a trace of the natural advantages in 
that region obliterated since my boyhood. 

The Old Colony Railroad, connecting what was originally 
the Pl}Tnouth Colony with that of Massachusetts Bay, was 
not constructed until I was ten years old; and up to as late 
as 1850 Quincy was practically what it had always been — 
a quiet, steady-going, rural Massachusetts community, with 
its monotonous main thoroughfares and commonplace con- 
necting streets, both thoroughfare and by-ways lined with 
wooden houses, wholly innocent of any attempts at archi- 
tecture, and all painted white with window blinds of green. 
With the exception of the workers in the quarries, not 
yet developed into a purely mining community — with all 
the term implies — the place was still peopled by those of 
the original stock; for the foreign and more particularly the 
Irish element had not yet reached the self-asserting point. 
Later Quincy became to a large extent a bed-room annex to 
the Boston ware-house; but in my boyhood period it was 
still largely agricultural, while its leading industry was the 
making of boots and shoes, almost every house along the 
main street having a small one-story annex, from which on 
any summer's day could be heard the incessant tapping of 
the hammer on the lap-stone. The factory and the machine- 
made shoe were as yet unknown or in their earliest stages of 
development. In the centre of the town, where the roads to 
Plymouth and Taunton branched, stood the meeting-house 
and the town-hall; the "tavern," as it was called, also was 
here located, with the big, shady elm-trees in front of it. 
From it the daily stage-coaches started for Boston over the 
"pike," or went down Plymouth way; while, in summer, 



8 Charles Francis Adams 

on the porch and in their shirt sleeves, sat the red-faced, 
big-belHed, village topers and loafers, as well known as the 
town-pump. The blacksmith's shop on the main street, the 
tannery "down in the Hollow," and the oxen-drawoi stone- 
teams were objects of deep interest, as my brother John and 
I, red-headed and freckle-faced urchins of six and eight years, 
trudged daily through the village to and from school. Since 
then what they are pleased to call "the march of improve- 
ment" has done away with that whole phase of more placid 
existence. The mass of mankind in Quincy as elsewhere is 
now doubtless much better housed, better taught and better 
served than it then was; but the place I as a child loved so 
well no longer exists. It has been transformed into a con- 
ventional, commonplace suburban community, progressive 
and well to do, but wholly devoid of individuality. So, no 
more than its everlasting hills or the islands in its bay are 
the present Inhabitants of Quincy suggestive of the Quincy 
of my boyhood. The hills have been stripped, and gutted or 
built over, made common and vulgarized, or devastated and 
turned, as I have already said, into a mining horror, while 
the islands have lost their green, whale-back outlines under 
an eruption of summer hotels and seashore cottages. As to 
the population, no one knows me now as I walk the once 
familiar streets; and I recall no faces. With local feeling, 
traditions also are gone. As I pass to-and-fro in Quincy I 
now seem to wander with ghosts. 

Going back to the old days, my grandfather with his fam- 
ily lived In what we knew as "the old house, down the hill," 
while we occupied "the house on the hill," built by my father 
two years after I was born. There we passed the summers, 
from late May to early November, until we children grew 



Youth and Education 



up. Then the house no longer sufficed. We were crowded 
out. My grandfather died in 1848, and my grandmother 
occupied "the house down the hill " only one or two summers 
afterwards. In 1850, I think it was, my father took posses- 
sion; and there in June, 1889, my mother died, just one year 
more than a century after John and Abigail Adams first 
took possession in 1788, after their return from Europe and 
our first English Mission. We were all fond of "the old 
house," and pleasant recollections cluster about it. Still 
belonging to the family, it is now (191 2) occupied by my 
brother Brooks; and I know of no other case in all my New 
England acquaintance of a fourth generation still living 
under the same roof-tree, covering an unbroken occupancy 
of considerably over a century. 

My earliest recollections of that house are associated with 
my grandfather and his family, consisting of my grand- 
mother, his daughter-in-law, "Mrs. John," and his grand- 
daughter, the only surviving child of his second son, John. 
As to my grandfather, he was during the whole period I 
remember him an old man, absorbed in work and public 
life. He seemed to be always writing — as, indeed, he was. 
I can see him now, seated at his table in the middle of the 
large east room, which he used as a library, a very old- 
looking gentleman, with a bald head and white fringe of 
hair — writing, writing — with a perpetual inkstain on the 
fore-finger and thumb of the right hand. He was kind and 
considerate to his grandchildren, and seemed to like to have 
us in that library of his, walled in with over-loaded book- 
shelves; but his was not a holiday temperament. Always 
unaccompanied, he used to wander about the ragged, un- 
kempt old place — with its pear and cherry trees, and old- 



lo Charles Francis Adams 

time orchard — hatchet and saw in hand, pruning and 
watching his seedlings; and he would take grave, sedate 
walks — constitutionals — invariably along the highway, 
and apparently absorbed in meditation ; but he never seemed 
to relax; nor could I imagine him playful. In his library he 
was always at work, or nodding in his chair. Though in de- 
tail different, my father was in substance much the same. 
To their own great misfortune, neither of them had any real 
taste — no innate love — for innocent outdoor amusement; 
that is, they did not care to get near to Nature whether in 
the woods or on the water. They were, moreover, both of 
them afflicted with an everlasting sense of work to be ac- 
complished — "so much to do, so little done!" The terrible 
New England conscience implanted in men who, inheriting 
its traditions, had largely outgrown Calvinistic theology. 
They were, in a word, by inheritance ingrained Puritans, 
and no Puritan by nature probably ever was really com- 
panionable. Of the two, however, my grandfather was in- 
comparably the more active-minded and interesting. His 
was a truly inquiring and observing disposition; and, more- 
over, he had a fairly pronounced taste for social life. His 
chief difficulty lay in a tendency to introspection, which was 
almost morbidly developed by the journalizing habit. His 
diary was his daily confidant; and he grew to desire no other. 
The "old house" stood on the Plymouth road facing 
south, in comparatively low ground; but in 1837 my father 
built a country home on " the Hill " — President's Hill, as 
it was called, Stoneyfield Hill in Provincial days — in what 
had previously been John Adams's cow-pasture. The two 
residences were perhaps an eighth of a mile apart, though 
in full view of each other; and, from the gallery of my father's 



Toiith and Education 



1 1 



house — portico, we called it — my grandfather used daily 
to time the rising and the settmg sun. Now, seventy years 
later, I can see him standing or sitting, watch in hand, not- 
ing the earliest and last rays of the summer day. There is 
nothing of that period I more vividly recall. A somewhat 
solitary man, he was to me, hardly more than a child, an 
attractive as well as a great one. He impressed my imagina- 
tion. 

It was not so with my father. He was built on more rigid 
and narrower lines. He was even less companionable. He 
was never the companion of our sports and holidays. To us, 
it would, as I now see, have made all the difference conceiv- 
able had he loved the woods and the water, — walked and 
rode and sailed a boat; been, in short, our companion as well 
as instructor. The Puritan was in him, and he did n't know 
how! In reading his diary, for instance, I came across two 
entries which tell the whole story — they are as a calcium 
light cast upon him, and his relations with his children. They 
are from the record of 1843, and as follows; my sister, his 
eldest child, being then a girl of about twelve: "Took a 
walk with my daughter, Louisa. We went along the road 
to Quincy Point, until we reached a street that has been 
lately opened and called North Street, from which we struck 
into another called South Street, which comes out below 
Mrs. Miller's house. It is curious, and illustrative of my 
little inclination to ramble, that, so long as I have lived in 
Quincy, I have never before to my knowledge been in this 
pretty little road." Yet South Street is one of the oldest 
and most picturesque — at least it was so then, and long 
after — it has now, eheu ! gone the way of all the rest — it 
was, I say, one of the oldest, the most picturesque, and to 



1 2 Charles Francis Adams 

me the most familiar roads in Quincy; and almost within 
sight of his house. Yet at thirty-six he did n't know of its 
existence ! So the same year, but two days later. My brother 
John and I, that summer, were at a sort of small boarding- 
school, at Hingham — of which, more, presently — and we 
were brought home every Saturday, to pass Sunday. The 
autumn was come, and with it the smelting season; the 
only kind of sport in which I ever knew my father to en- 
gage. He used now and then to take us down to Black's 
Creek, as it was called, where was Greenleaf's wharf, half- 
a-mile or so from the house. So he now made this entry of 
30th September: "The weather was charming. I idled 
away the morning on Mr. Daniel Greenleaf's wharf, with 
very little success. Perhaps this consumption of time is 
scarcely justifiable; but why not take some of life for simple 
enjoyments, provided that they interfere with no known 
duty? My boys came home from school and joined me. We 
remained until dinner time." 

There you have it! Hereditarily warped, he had no con- 
ception of the idea that in idling away that soft, kindly 
September day in companionship with his two boys just 
home from school, and all close to Nature, he was saving 
one day at least from utter loss — making of it the very 
best possible use that could be made ! And so he had to ex- 
cuse himself, to himself, for this scarcely justifiable waste 
of time! The thought of it even now saddens and irritates 
me — the difference to me would have been so great. I 
have suffered from it all through life. The twig was bent 
wrong. I ought to have been brought up in closer touch 
with Nature and its enjoyments. I should then have ac- 
quired aptitudes — sailing, rambling, the playing of games, 



Youth and Education 1 3 



the genuine love of outdoor life — which I never did ac- 
quire, and the lack of which I lament more and more every 
year I live. I would to-day give much to feel at home on a 
boat or a bicycle. I have since sailed a great deal, and bi- 
cycled somewhat; but it was in both cases too late! I never 
got so as to feel really at home when handling sheet and 
tiller, or when on a wheel. And so the most important as 
well as enjoyable branches of education for me were neg- 
lected or abjured in youth, and only partly made good by my 
subsequent fortunate army experience at over twenty-six. 
But my father saw no good whatever in athletics; and he 
had a prejudice against the gymnasium. As to my army 
experience, altogether the most beneficial of my life educa- 
tionally, until long after the event he simply deplored it as 
to me ruinous. What was in truth my salvation, developed, 
as he at the time persuaded himself, all my most objection- 
able tendencies. In his case, two hundred years of ancestral 
swaddling clothes could not be burst. The loss has been 
great, and, in my case, the injury sustained was Irreparable. 
It was never, except In part, made good. 

This was educational error number one; and, before I get 
through, the list will be long! My father had the old New 
England sense of duty In religious observances. The Sab- 
bath and church-going were Institutions. All through my 
childhood how I disliked Sunday! I was glad when Monday 
came; for me It was n't "black Monday," for It was six days 
before another Sunday. I remember now the silence, the 
sombre idleness, the sanctified atmosphere of restraint of 
those days, with their church-bells, their sedate walk and 
their special duties. We children had to be brought up 
strictly In the way we should go; for then we would not de- 



14 Charles Francis Adams 

part from it when we were old! Would n't we! The recol- 
lection of those Sundays haunts me now. We always had a 
late breakfast — every one did; and we dined early — roast 
beef always for dinner; and I got a dislike for roast beef 
which lasted almost to manhood, because I thus had to 
eat it every Sunday at 1.30, after a breakfast at 9. Then 
came the Sunday hair-combing and dressing. After which, 
Bible reading, four chapters, each of us four verses in rota- 
tion. Then a Sunday lesson, committing some verses from 
the Bible or a religious poem to memory. I especially re- 
member the Sermon on the Mount and Pope's Messiah; 
and these were the hardest lessons of the whole week, those 
we all disliked most; and so distasteful were they that they 
have left on me to this day a sort of aversion to the Bible 
and to Pope. Then came the going to Church. Lord! that 
going to Church! Twice a day, rain or shine, summer and 
winter. In town [Boston] we went to that dreary old Con- 
gregational barn in Chauncy Street, — the gathering place 
of the First Church of Boston — where my uncle, Dr. 
Frothingham, held forth. And, by the way, only the other 
day I heard a good story of Dr. Frothingham. It came from 
Mr. Stetson, with whom I was associated in the Commis- 
sion to award cost, etc., of the Metropolitan Park System. 
He was the son of old Caleb Stetson, of Medford, who mar- 
ried my father and mother more than ninety years ago. 
He mentioned a turn of speech of Dr. Lunt's, our Quincy 
pastor, who once remarked of my uncle Frothingham, in a 
grand burst of expression: "Dr. Frothingham is a man of 
gentle and saintly life; I picture him as a sanctified isle in 
the midst of a wild and Godless sea." 

Dr. Frothingham may have been all that. He certainly 



Touth and Education 1 5 



was a man of very sweet and gentle character; but, as a 
preacher, he recalls to me only a slow, somewhat soft and 
diffuse delivery in that superheated, roof-lighted, somnolent 
barrack, where I passed so many weary, penitential hours 
in those winter months in "the forties" and the "early fif- 
ties." The old meeting-house was removed in 1868, 1 think; 
and I well remember going there on the Sunday when serv- 
ices were held in it for the last time [May 10, 1868] in order 
that, as I went down the familiar steps on leaving, I could 
say to myself: "There; that is behind me. Never, never 
again, shall I enter those doors, or sit in that pew." 

Such was my Boston church-going. That at Quincy was 
not so bad; and yet bad enough. Dr. William P. Lunt was a 
natural orator. He looked the preacher; and his voice was 
rich and full. The church too was more cheerful, and the 
summer air used to steal in through the open windows. But 
the only portion of the ser\' ice which ever commended itself 
to me was that closing prayer, which I knew by heart — 
and can repeat now — and then the benediction — and the 
hateful services were over! I was free then to hurry home, 
to get out of my Sunday into my week-day clothes, and I 
could go and play; for Sunday was now done, and would n't 
come again for six days ! Those New England Sabbaths actu- 
ally embittered my youth. It required the drastic war edu- 
cation to emancipate me from them. Educational mistake 
number two ! 

Fortunately for me, the railroad did not get Into Quincy 
until 1846, and I was then eleven years old; so I did have a 
few years of child life really in the country. The conunon- 
schools my father did not care to send his children to; and 
I have always been glad of it. I don't associate with the 



1 6 Charles Francis Adams 

laborers on my place, nor would the association be agreeable 
to either of us. Their customs, language, habits and con- 
ventionalities differ from mine; as do those of their children. 
I believe in school life; and I believe in the equality of men 
before the law; but social equality, whether for man or 
child, is altogether another thing. My father, at least, did n't 
force that on us. So, as children, we went to the small 
private schools, were taught in a way by the clergymen of 
the Episcopal Church, or, what was quite as well for us, 
were not taught at all. But that school question got serious; 
and, in 1843 — I being then just eight — John and I, by 
a happy inspiration, were sent to Hingham, to be boarded 
and schooled by a young man named Wilder, who took in 
four other boys, two named Eldridge, from Boston, and two 
others, sons of George Bancroft, the historian, both of whom 
subsequently I was with in college, the younger being in the 
same class with me.^ I remember the first week at Hingham 
well. How homesick John and I were! We were only eight 
and nine years old, and had never been away from home; 
and we were as miserable as boys usually are under such 
circumstances. But that summer ought to have taught a 
lesson to my parents and to us. John and I always after- 
wards agreed in looking back on the months at Hingham as 
the one bright, pleasant, joyous summer of our school-days. 
It stands out from among the others, in white. We did n't 
learn anything; but we were with other boys, and we bathed, 
and rambled, and were up to boyish mischief. Forty years 
and more afterwards I used often to ride through Hingham 
on my way to our summer seaside resort, the Glades, in 
North Scituate, and I always liked to go by that house, 
» John Chandler Bancroft (H.U. 1854) and George Bancroft (H. U. 1856). 



Youth and Education 1 7 



looking up at the window of the room in which John and I 
slept. 

And here was educational error number three; an error 
I never have been able sufficiently to deplore, for it deeply 
affected my character, my physical development, and my 
subsequent existence even to this day. As a developing boy 
I peculiarly needed the influence and atmosphere of board- 
ing-school life. I should have been compelled to rough it 
with other boys. Of that I stood in great want, and that for 
several reasons. 

And, in the first place, though in no way remarkable, I 
see now that I was, and am still, individual. I don't see 
things, and take things, quite in the usual and average way. 
I did n't when a boy; and the best and most useful education 
I ever had was when undergoing constant attrition after I 
went to college, and, subsequently, in the army. I look back 
on it with deep thankfulness, as well as sincere pleasure. 
I needed more of it — all I could have of it! Not by nature 
daring — physically, on the contrary, inclined to be shrink- 
ing — having a positive inaptitude for games and athletic 
exercises, disposed to be studious in a way, I grew up as a 
child during the period of my grandfather's greatest politi- 
cal prominence; and its light was reflected on me at school. 
I was the grandson of John Quincy Adams; and not quite 
as other boys. This I felt. There was therefore in me a dan- 
gerous tendency, which needed correction sadly, and which 
a boarding-school life would have strongly tended to cor- 
rect. Moreover, I would so much have enjoyed it; just as 
I enjoyed the mere taste I had of it at Hingham. It might 
have made me "a good fellow." At any rate, it would 
have taken me away from home, and home influences and 



1 8 Charles Francis Adams 

surroundings; and these, in my case were bad, or, rather, not 
what I needed. But I never did go to boarding-school, and 
the plastic period was passed in immediate contact with 
home and amid a most miscellaneous collection of books, 
in which I sedulously hunted up everything that was perni- 
cious, as well as much that was good. Here was educational 
mistake number four 1 

In my boyhood nothing whatever was done to amuse chil- 
dren. They might amuse themselves, or go unamused; that 
was their affair! That was before the day of games and sports; 
and at Quincy we had few horses, and no boats. I did not 
realize it at the time, but my vacations and intervals of 
leisure were dreariness personified. We bathed in Black's 
Creek, and that was all; and, curiously enough, bathing — 
diving and swimming — is the one activity which has stood 
by me ever since. It has been my delight; and in it I have 
excelled. That, I did acquire when young; and the pleasure 
I have had in that one out-of-doors sport has caused me to 
realize how infinite, how irreparable has been my loss in 
not acquiring other muscular aptitudes while so doing was 
possible. And there I struck a natural defect which a differ- 
ent education would have strongly tended to counteract. 
I am inclined to be what is kno\\Ti as muscle-slow — that 
is my muscular system is not elastic. I think I have some- 
where remarked in writing on this; and when learning to 
ride a bicycle, at over sixty, an appreciation of the fact first 
dawned on me. This ought to have been corrected in my 
youth by practice at all sorts of games — skating, fencing, 
boxing, riding. Unfortunately — most unfortunately, for 
me — my father did not at all believe in that sort of training. 
Sports and games he held in horror; almost as much as for 



Totith and Education 1 9 



young men just out of college he held Europe in horror, be- 
cause a classmate of his — Alleyne Otis — after graduation 
chanced to go to Europe, and came home an ass, and 
remained an ass all the long continuing days of life. My 
father did n't realize that Alleyne Otis was born an ass; and 
was, though as yet not effusively so developed, an ass when 
he went to Europe, as well as when he came home. So he 
failed to discriminate between individuals; and, laying down 
one rule for all, his theory was that the proper thing for 
every young man was to get to work as soon as he could 
scrabble through college, begin to make a living, marry, and 
become, as he would express it, "a useful member of soci- 
ety." Any exceptionalism or individuality he regarded with 
aversion. It was a snare and delusion; so, in my case, he 
uniformly, and, in fact, all through life, diagnosed wrongly, 
and took a mistaken course. He meant well; but he wa$ 
neither s}mipathetic nor observant. With him boys were 
alike, and one hat fitted them all; while Europe was merely 
another term for demoralization. As I look back on his course 
towards me, well as he meant it and thoroughly conscien- 
tious as he was, I should now respect myself a great deal more 
if I had then rebelled and run away from home, to sea or 
the Devil. Indeed, if I had had in me any element of real 
badness, or even recklessness of temperament, it would have 
been fatally developed. But I was n't bad or a dare-devil; 
and I was born with a decided sense of obligation to myself 
and to others. 

But, in looking back on that early home and school edu- 
cational period since I began this writing, and considering 
the light that period throws on the man's subsequent life, I 
confess to a sense of bepuzzlement. I find myself observing 



2 Charles Francis Adams 

and studying myself at a distance of nearly seventy years, 
and trying to make myself out. My observation in life 
leads me to believe that nearly every human being has 
an aptitude; that is, there is something that he or she can 
do better than all other things. One in a hundred, again, 
has a remarkable aptitude; and, in one in a thousand, this 
aptitude is developed into something extraordinary. It 
then amounts to natural insight, and constitutes genius. 
Now a perfect system of education, if it could be devised, 
would be one w^hich, while developing to the fullest extent 
all the faculties, would allow free play to the special apti- 
tude. But this is just what our American school system fails 
to do, and does not aim at. In that system a child is — a 
child ! and all children are cast in the same matrix. Thus the 
average child gets along with a tolerable degree of comfort; 
but the child with an individuality experiences much the 
fate a child with large feet would undergo if all children's 
shoes were made on one last. 

In my case, it so chanced that I was individual without 
any specially pronounced aptitude or exceptional capacity. 
In reading one of Montaigne's Essays the other day I came 
across the following, which seemed very applicable to me. 
He was writing of his own childhood, and he said: "I had a 
slow wit, that would go no faster than it was led; a tardy 
understanding, a languishing invention, and, above all, in- 
eradicable defect of memory; so that it is no wonder if, from 
all these, nothing considerable could be extracted." For me, 
as I now see it, the absolutely ideal training would have 
been that described in School Days at Rugby. I ought to have 
been sent away from home and been rubbed into shape 
among other boys; I should have been made to undergo a 



Touth and Education 



21 



severe all-around discipline; I should have been forced to 
participate in all sorts of athletic games; I ought to have 
been rounded into shape as much like other boys as a school 
life could round me. The radical error in my case was that 
I was kept at home, and brought up in an uncongenial day- 
school. I do not hesitate to say that these mistakes of child- 
hood have gravely prejudiced my entire life. 

At ten years of age I did have the good fortune to be sent 
to a private day-school kept by a Mr. David B. Tower. He 
was a very portly, good-natured man, coming from the 
Cohasset family of that name, and a good teacher. For some 
reason, Tower saw, or thought he saw, something in me; and 
to him I am, to this day, under great obligation. He en- 
couraged me; and did all a man could to cure my lament- 
able want of capacity for verbal memorization. At his school 
I rapidly gained in confidence, and began to feel some faith 
in myself. Unfortunately, it was a day school, kept in a room 
in the Park Street church-building, and I was at home in 
the evenings and Sundays; and such play as I had was in 
the streets of Boston. I needed the atmosphere of boarding- 
school life. 

Instead of getting it, I was, at the age of thirteen, sent to 
the Boston Latin School. Of this institution my father had 
a very exalted opinion. He had gone to it himself, when 
brought home from Europe in 1818, and been under Master 
Gould. For some reason, it suited him; perhaps in contrast 
to the school he went to in England, and the antiquated 
systems of teaching to which he had there been subjected — 
systems about as absurd and illogical as those pursued in a 
State's prison. In any event, however, the Latin School — 
the "famous Boston Latin School," as it was then, and has 



2 2 Charles Francis Adams 

since been, called — became a kind of fetish with my father, 
and to it in due time all his sons were destined to go, as a 
matter of course. 

It may have worked well with my father under Dr. Gould, 
but it did n't work well with his sons under Mr. Dix^vell 
— that I can assert with confidence. The school building 
was then in Bedford Street — a street has since been laid 
out over its site. The school building was a cold, dreary, 
granite edifice, of the stone-mason style of architecture in 
vogue about 1840. It was pulled dowTi about thirty years 
ago; and I rejoiced to see it go! It effaced to a degree a hate- 
ful memory. I was at the Latin School three years; my 
brother John was at it five. I loathed it, and John loathed 
it worse than I. Not one single cheerful or satisfactory mem- 
ory is with me associated therewith. Its methods were bad, 
its standards low, its rooms unspeakably gloomy. It was a 
dull, traditional, lifeless day-academy, in which a conven- 
tional, commonplace, platoon-front, educational drill was 
carried on. I absolutely languished there, and, for that rea- 
son, my judgments might be deemed harsh; but one day, 
only a few years ago, I found myself seated at table next 
David P. Kimball, who was always at the Latin School at 
the head of the class before mine, and who, subsequently, 
was first scholar in my class at Harvard. I got talking with 
him of schools, for he had in life been a successful man, and 
our relations were kindly. So I said to him: "Well, David, 
I hardly need ask you, I suppose your sons all went to the 
Latin School." He turned on me, and vindictively snapped 
out, "Latin School! I wouldn't send a dog to the Latin 
School!" I certainly felt that way; but I never got on there, 
and always gravitated towards the foot of the class; David 



Touth and Education 2 3 

Kimball, on the contrary, was at the head, and a favorite 
prize-taker. All the same, on that subject we were one. My 
single pleasant association with the Boston Latin School 
was — leaving it ! Under the system there in vogue in the 
days of Di-Tvvell and Gardner, I don't see how any good 
results, as respects scholarship, individuality or character, 
were reasonably to be expected. It was a conventional, me- 
chanical, low-standard day-school and classical grind-mill. 
I left it sixty years ago, and I think of the period I spent 
there still as the dreariest, the most depressing and the most 
thoroughly worse than profitless of my life. I have not a 
good word to say of it; and like John Randolph and the sheep, 
I would go a long distance out of my way to give it a kick. 

Sending me to the Boston Latin School was educational 
mistake number five: and a far-reaching one! 

Then came in rapid succession mistakes numbers six and 
seven — serious both, very serious! As I plainly did n't get 
on at the Boston Latin School, my father, in 185 1, concluded 
to take me away. I ought then to have gone to Exeter or 
Andover, been there fitted for college, and gone in the regular 
way. Instead of that, largely at my own solicitation, my 
father put me under the charge of Francis W. Palfrey, the 
son of his old friend Dr. John G. Palfrey, whom, in reality, 
he wanted to aid. The intention was good; the choice bad 
— absurd. Frank Palfrey graduated that year, and, with 
me, he was far more of a companion than a preceptor. With 
quick faculties he was a fair scholar; but he greatly lacked 
judgment and sobriety, and his and my thoughts were far 
more intent on parties, social life and dissipation than on 
our studies. It was a singularly unfortunate arrangement. 

Alore unfortunately still, I liked it; and, for some unac- 



2 4 Charles Francis Adams 

countable reason, instead of entering college at the regular- 
time and in the usual way, I stayed out a year, and entered 
sophomore, in 1853. It was a great blunder; and I have 
never ceased to regret it. Had I been really fortunate, I 
would, in 1853, have failed to pass my examinations for the 
advanced standing, and been thrown back on the class of 
1857. A severe mortification and disappointment at the 
moment, this would, in reality, have been for me a piece of 
great good luck; for the class of '57 was a remarkable class 
in many ways, and especially for its class feeling and spirit. 
It contained, too, an unusual number of agreeable and in^ 
teresting men, many of whom have since attained distinc- 
tion, and with whom I grew to hold close relations; while, 
on the other hand, the class of '56 was noticeably lacking in 
all these respects. It was as a class distinctly unnoticeable 
— a low average; and, in subsequent years, the chief dis- 
tinction it achieved was contributing two inmates to the 
State's prison. 

None the less, my college life I look back on with pleasure, 
and a moderate satisfaction. I blundered through in a way, 
committing, I may fairly say, as I see it now, about as many 
mistakes as I easily could ; but, after all — studied from a 
distance in time — it was the period of freedom and germi- 
nation. I was boyish and silly, but I did begin to develop. 
Acting on tradition, and influenced by my brother John's 
example, I did not live in the buildings and in the full at- 
mosphere of college life; and, during the two last and best 
years, I had my brother Henry to room with me, though he 
was two classes after me. This was bad for both of us ; but 
I did learn by experience, and preserved him subsequently 
from the mistakes into which I had fallen. When I gradu- 



Youth and Education 2 5 

ated, I persuaded him to live in the buildings, and by so 
doing, having a chum of his own class, to identify himself 
absolutely with college life and the associations of Hol- 
worthy. He did so, and it saved his college course. 

It was at Harvard that my aptitude, such as it was, be- 
gan to develop; and to that I owed most of the satisfaction 
I derived from college life. I had always been a reader; and 
I now began to take to writing. Every man of any intellec- 
tual activity has, I presume, been conscious of certain pe- 
riods of germination — times of receptivity. If a book then 
chances into his hands, he reads it in a way which there- 
after acts as a milestone on the road of life. He has devel- 
oped a new sense; the seed has fallen in soil ready to germi- 
nate and make it bear fruit. I perfectly well remember in 
the winter of 1848 my father returning from a journey to 
Washington, and bringing in his hand a paper-bound copy 
of Harper Bros.' cheap reprint of the first volume of Macau- 
lay's England, then just out. I was thirteen; and of Ma- 
caulay I had never even heard the name. Boy-like, I picked 
the book up, and began to turn over its pages. I can see the 
room and the day now — the dining-room in the Mt. Ver- 
non Street house, the fire in the grate, the hair-covered 
rocking-chair in which I sat, the table, set for dinner. I took 
the book up, and almost instantly got absorbed in it. Though 
I did not the least in the world realize it, I then and there 
quickened, my aptitude asserted itself. The only trouble 
afterwards was that, being a mere aptitude and not an over- 
powering call, this tendency, or inclination, never domi- 
nated me to the exclusion of all else. It was just the ordinary 
case of a facility In a certain direction, existent, but not 
strong enough to dictate a line of life action. 



2 6 Charles Francis Adams 

Nevertheless, in college the tendency developed, and I 
was one of the recognized litterateurs of my time and class. 
In the Pudding Club, I was Secretary, Poet and Odist, and 
my success as such was marked. I knew it, and felt it. I 
wrote for the Magazine; there the articles — on Whittier, 
Hawthorne, Charles Reade, etc. — - are yet, bound in my 
voluminous Miscellanies. This was the one great and grati- 
fying feature of my college life, the sense of growth. For 
the rest, it was very, very pleasant; but it did n't amount 
to much. A great miscellaneous reader, I was no student, 
and had no "call." I got through my course without any 
trouble; securing no rank, but avoiding all difficulties. I 
was not wise in my selection of studies; but I had no sort of 
encouragement to wisdom. For instance, I had rather a 
fancy for Greek. With no aptitude for language of any sort, 
I was conscientious; and, in my own way, studiously in- 
clined. Those were the days of Professors Felton and Soph- 
ocles, and the methods of instruction in Greek at Harvard 
were simply beneath contempt. It was taught in thorough 
school-boy fashion — neither philosophically nor elegantly; 
we were not made grammarians, and we were not initiated 
into a charming literature. We blundered along in class- 
readers, a parcel of half-taught school-boys. I came within 
an ace of being a fair Greek scholar. The slightest encour- 
agement or assistance would have made one of me. But 
Felton and Sophocles threw me off the track; and they were, 
both of them, admirably calculated so to do. In my sopho- 
more year, merely as a self-imposed task, I read the Iliad 
through, from the first line to the last. I got so that I could 
read it at sight — a hundred lines an hour. A very little 
more, and I would have acquired the faculty of reading 



Youth and Education 2 7 

Greek as a living language — as I read French and German. 
The methods of instruction in use killed the possibility. 
Absolutely without inducement to keep on, I weakly de- 
sisted; and, to my infinite and lasting subsequent regret, the 
half-acquired faculty fell into disuse; and now I can't even 
read the Greek characters. Again, with a faint aptitude, I 
had neither call nor encouragement. It has been so with me 
all through life. 

In those years I kept a diary. So doing was enjoined on 
me by my father; and I kept it from my Latin School days 
until the time I went into the army, in my twenty-fifth 
year. Later on I kept the volumes sealed up in a package, 
with directions that they should be destroyed in the event 
of my death. A few years ago — some ten or twelve — I 
opened the parcel, and looked through the volumes. I did 
this during my Sundays, passed in the house at Quincy 
while living in Boston — very charming Sundays they were, 
too; pleasant to pass, pleasant to look back on. That was in 
my busy, Union-Pacific period. Starting early, before the 
family were down, I used to walk out to Quincy — always by 
the old Plymouth road and over Milton Hill — and pass the 
quiet, delightful morning hours, reading undisturbed, in my 
sun-lighted library. Then as the day grew old and the light 
failed, I would start back, and walk home to Boston, through 
Neponset and by Massachusetts Avenue. Those were the 
pleasantest days I then had in my whole winter life. Those, 
I would like to re-live. 

During those days I exhumed the sealed package, and, 
thirty years later, read over that old diary. The revela- 
tion of myself to myself was positively shocking. Then and 
there I was disillusioned. Up to that time — and I was then 



2 8 Charles Francis Adams 

about fifty-five — I had indulged In the pleasing delusion that 
it was In me, under proper conditions of time, place and occa- 
sion, to do, or be, something rather noticeable. I have never 
thought so since. Seeing myself face to face through fifty 
years cured me of that deception. I felt that no human being 
who, between fifteen and twenty-five, so pictured himself 
from day to day could, by any possibility, develop into any- 
thing really considerable. It was n't that the thing was bad 
or that my record was discreditable; it was worse! It was 
silly. That it was crude, goes without saying. That I did n't 
mind! But I did blush and groan and swear over Its unmis- 
takable, unconscious Immaturity and ineptitude, its con- 
ceit, its weakness and Its cant. I saw myself in a looking- 
glass, and I said — "Can that Indeed be I!" and, reflecting, 
I then realized that the child was father of the man ! It was 
with difficulty I forced myself to read through that dread- 
ful record; and, as I finished each volume, It went into the 
fire; and I stood over It until the last leaf was ashes. It was 
a tough lesson ; but a useful one. I had seen myself as others 
had seen me. I have never felt the same about myself since. 
I now humbly thank fortune that I have almost got through 
life without making a conspicuous ass of myself. 

But to go back to college days. "Tell me who your friends 
are, and I will tell you who you are." That is an unfailing 
test; and, going back, I must confess that my college friends 
were of a very miscellaneous character. One thing I can, 
however, surely say of them, that, edifying or otherwise as 
influences — Idle or studious, sedate or dissipated — and I 
was intimate with all kinds — they were the brightest and 
most attractive men In the Cambridge of my time. Stephen 
G. Perkins was, perhaps, the closest of my friends. He was 



Youth and Education 2 9 



afterwards killed at the battle of Cedar Mountain, in the 
summer of 1862 — a lieutenant of the gallant Second Mas- 
sachusetts Infantry; and I say of him now, nearly forty 
years after his death, what General F. C. Barlow, of the 
class of '55, said of him to me many years ago — Stephen 
Perkins was, on the whole, the man of "the choicest mind 
I ever knew." He was manly, simple, refined; and he had 
withal fine perceptions and a delicate humor. He always 
impressed me with a sense of my own inferiority, and his 
friendship was a compliment. He loved to talk; but in a 
quiet, reflective and observant way. He was mature and 
self-respecting; one who thought much, and looked quite 
through the acts of men. I read of his death one day when 
in camp at Hilton Head, and I felt I had lost something 
never to be replaced — a friend of college days. He lies 
buried, I believe, in the Georgetown cemetery; and "green 
be the turf above him!" 

I cannot spare time to run over the names of the others. 
Some of them were from the South; and they also, most of 
them, died in the war. Not a few were very dissipated in 
college, and their dissipation ended them. Others were the 
exact opposite; and not a few achieved eminence — Phillips 
Brooks, Frank Barlow, Edward Dalton, H. H. Furness. 
Taken altogether, it was a goodly company, and it almost 
reconciles me to the image I saw of myself in my diary, that 
it was given me to walk as an equal in such a throng. 

Meanwhile, I was not popular in my college days; nor, 
Indeed, have I ever been so since. My brother John was. 
He had a very charming, ingratiating presence and manner, 
when in the mood, and a far greater social aptitude. He was 
essentially "a good fellow," as the term went, and a charm- 



3 o Charles Francis Adams 

ing companion. I wanted to be; but It was n't quite in me. 
Never quiet and natural, I was inclined to be always acting 
a part; and I did not act it well. Moreover, gauche, I was 
singularly lacking in what is known as tact. I had almost a 
faculty for doing or saying the wrong thing at any given 
time; and I was always painfully self-conscious. This made 
me shy; and the world, as usual, set my shyness to the ac- 
count of pride. Not a bad fellow — indeed, at heart, a very 
good fellow, anxious to be friends with all the world and liked 
of every one — I never could overcome my pre-natal man- 
ner, and learn to do and say gracious things in a gracious 
way. It was so in college; it has been so ever since. It 
was congenital — hereditary and in the blood; or, as James 
Russell Lowell remarked in some familiar letter of his printed 
by one in long subsequent years a greatly prized friend 
of mine' — Charles Eliot Norton — "the Adamses have a 
genius for saying even a gracious thing in an ungracious 
way!" I well remember Norton's aspect of unconcealed 
embarrassment when I referred with keen appreciation to 
this passage in the volume he had edited, and expressed my 
sincere gladness that he had not editorially omitted it. It 
was so keen and true! 

Yet, recurring to college days, at Cambridge, I was not 
actually unpopular. I belonged, and belonged easily and of 
right, to all the clubs and all the societies, literary and social; 
my difficulty, I suppose, was that I was always thinking 
too much of myself, and not enough of others. Certainly, 
the first impression I made on people was not altogether a 
favorable one. And, here again, the child was father of the 
man. 

As to my college course, and what I then did, I have never 



Touth and Education 3 1 

quite been able to make up my mind. I was studious in a 
way, for I followed my aptitudes and inclinations, and they 
led me to infinite reading and much writing. Was this bet- 
ter than to have studied for college rank? — for of that I 
had none. I was not even in the first half of the class. On 
the whole, in my case, I think the course I pursued was best. 
I broadened. The nutriment, and there was lots of it, passed 
into my system all the same — it entered into the grand, in 
the sense of final, result. I at least did not idle away my 
time. As contrasted with my father, my awful college diary 
compared with his of the same period of life — all of which I 
have been over — shows that I then was not half the man he 
was at the same age ; but, a better fellow, I had much the more 
enjoyable time. The mistake in my case lay in not under- 
standing myself, and cultivating persistence in some plan. 
As it was I just browsed about as fancy led. As I have said, 
the simple fact was, that, an ordinary man, I had no strongly 
pronounced aptitude; and, accordingly, felt no distinct call. 
Still, I look back on my Harvard days with pleasure, as a 
period of rapid development and much enjoyment. It com- 
pares brightly with what went before; and, educationally, 
was second in importance and value only to my subsequent 
army experience. 

It came to its predestined end in 1856, just as I attained 
my majority. That was the year of the Buchanan-Fremont 
campaign, the year in which the Republican party assumed 
national proportions. I had been brought up in an atmos- 
phere of politics. My earliest recollections were associated 
with my grandfather's triumphs in the conflicts of the 
House of Representatives, and I was impressed in imagina- 
tion by the circumstances of his death and the outburst of 



3 2 Charles Francis Adams 

popular feeling elicited by it. I remember now most vividly 
his funeral on that March day in Quincy, the eloquence and 
impressiveness of Dr. Lunt's funeral discourse, with the 
coffin lying before him, the solemn appearance of the fa- 
miliar and crowded church, and the booming of the minute- 
guns from the hill, on which I afterwards lived, as the body 
was slowly borne from tabernacle to tomb. I also remem- 
bered In a vague way the bitter disappointment of the election 
of 1844, and the war with Mexico which followed. In the 
canvass of 1848 my father took me with him when he went 
to Buffalo; and, while the Convention was in session, Charles 
Sumner, who was there but not a delegate, took me to Niagara, 
where, a few days later, my father joined us. He had then 
been nominated for Vice-President, on the ticket with Van 
Buren. In those days we saw a great deal of Mr. Sumner, 
and I felt for him an admiration closely verging on affection. 
He was very kind and considerate to us children, taking a 
deep interest In us, and being very companionable. He was 
at that time thirty-seven, and certainly a striking and most 
attractive personality. The world was all before him; he 
was kindly, earnest, enthusiastic and very genial. A con- 
stant guest at my father's house, he exercised a great influ- 
ence over me, and one very elevating. To him, as he was at 
that period and later, I feel under deep obligation. 

Those were the days of the Free Soil party; but I threw 
my first vote in 1856, and as a Republican. Thus I was from 
childhood a part of the anti-slavery agitation. I grew up 
in the atmosphere of it; and always at school I was in the 
small minority, my schoolmates being almost without ex- 
ception the sons of Whigs, and as a rule devoted adherents 
of Daniel Webster, between whom and my grandfather it 



To tub and Education 3 3 

was tacitly recognized there was no love lost. The very 
name of my grandfather was to the Webster Whig gall and 
wormwood. It is strange how tense enmities endure and 
are handed down. Even now, well on in a new century, the 
tradition of the bitter controversies which marked the com- 
mencement of the last century prevent the public recogni- 
tion of those of my name. Their prominence and the great 
character of the service they rendered, no one pretends to 
deny; no memorial thereof exists. 

But politics, and why I never found my way into political 
life, will come up naturally later on and in other connec- 
tions. I must first dispose of Harvard, and college life. The 
course I ought to have pursued at Harvard is now plain to 
me; and I almost wholly missed it. I should have followed 
Greek and Latin as literatures; taking the almost wholly 
worthless prescribed courses under the dead-alive methods 
of instruction then in use, but acquiring the faculty of sight 
reading by chamber practice. This I now see I was on the 
point of doing, and could easily have done. It would have 
been a most useful training for the practical work of after 
life; unfortunately, as I have said, I met with no one to in- 
cite me to that educational line, and I had not sufficient 
force to strike out a path for myself. I should then, next, 
have compelled myself to take some of the more elemen- 
tary mathematical courses, simply for the mental discipline 
they aff"ord. Having no mathematical aptitude whatever, I 
never could have attained any rank in those courses, or fig- 
ured otherwise than as a dolt in the recitation room; but 
that would in the desired result have "cut no ice," as the 
expression goes. What I needed was the regular mental 
gymnastics — the daily practice of following a line of sus- 



34 Charles Francis Adams 



tained thought out to exact results, more or less remote. 
Such an intellectual discipline I needed above all else; and, 
moreover, I could easily have acquired it; for, in subsequent 
life, I have more than once puzzled myself and somewhat 
surprised associates by reasoning out abstract formulas on 
general principles applicable to all cases of a similar charac- 
ter. Had I in college been trained, or trained myself on these 
lines, so doing would have contributed materially to my 
eifectiveness in practical life. Finally, I should have settled 
myself systematically down on the development of my apti- 
tude — the art of literary expression, and would naturally 
have done so. In this last respect, however, I was not 
wholly wanting; it came about by gravitation. 

This subject is one which has since interested me greatly, 
especially of late years; and I have reached some conclu- 
sions peculiarly my own. At Harvard there was quite a 
sufficiency of elective courses in my tune; and, since then, 
they have been multiplied out of all reason. And yet what 
would for me have been the most valuable of electives for 
purposes of mental training has never been proposed — a 
course in chess! Gravely to suggest it even would give rise 
to a look of surprise — probably a smile. Yet what is it 
but the German kriegspiel adapted to civil life vocations ? 
In playing chess, you must have a defined plan of campaign 
and follow it up intelligently and consecutively; you must 
watch your opponent and understand and meet his play. 
You must measure yourself against him. All this I have 
been doing after a fashion throughout my life; yet I never 
went through any special training in preparation for it. A 
course in chess would have been for me — kriegspiel! So, also, 
for others. Why not sometimes educate through amusement? 



Youth and Education 3 5 



Beyond all that, however, the difficulty then lay, as it 
still lies, with the Harvard system. It was and is, in my 
judgment, radically wrong; and the more satisfactory re- 
sults can never be secured until an organic change is worked 
in it. Without knowing what the matter was, I suffered 
under the system still in vogue in the middle of the last cen- 
tury as a student; and now (1912), well advanced in another 
century, I distinctly saw it as a member of one of the gov- 
erning boards to as late a period as 1906. I then set forth 
my experience and conclusions drawn therefrom in a Phi 
Beta Kappa Address — my parting word as an Overseer 
— delivered before the Columbia Chapter. That address 
is in print, and I still (1912) adhere to the conclusions 
therein set forth. In one word : the educational trouble with 
Harvard in my time was the total absence of touch and 
direct personal influence as between student and instructor. 
The academic, schoolmaster system prevailed; and, out- 
side of the recitation room, it was not good form — it was 
contrary to usage — for the instructors and the instructed 
to hold personal relations. Our professors in the Har\^ard of 
"the fifties" were a set of rather eminent scholars and highly 
respectable men. They attended to their duties with com- 
mendable assiduity, and drudged along in a dreary hum- 
drum sort of a way in a stereotyped method of classroom 
instruction. But as for giving direction to, in the sense of 
shaping, the individual minds of young men in their most 
plastic stage, so far as I know nothing of the kind was even 
dreamed of; it never entered into the professorial mind. This 
was what I needed, and all I needed — an intelligent, in- 
spiring direction; and I never got it, nor a suggestion of it. 
I was left absolutely without guidance. I might blunder 



36 Charles Francis Adams 



through, and, doubtless, somehow would blunder through, 
just as I did; but if I could n't work my problem out for 
myself, it would remain unsolved. And that was the Har- 
vard system. It remains in essence the system still — the old, 
outgrown, pedagogic relation of the large class-recitation 
room. The only variation has been through Eliot's effort 
to replace it by the yet more pernicious system of premature 
specialization. This is a confusion of the college and the uni- 
versity functions, and constitutes a distinct menace to all 
true higher education. The function of the college is an 
all-round development, as a basis for university speciali- 
zations. Eliot never grasped that fundamental fact; and so 
he undertook to turn Harvard College into a German 
university — specializing the student at eighteen. He thus 
made still worse what was in my time bad enough. He in- 
stituted a system of one-sided contact in place of a system 
based on no contact at all. It is devoutly to be hoped that, 
some day, a glimmer of true light will effect an entrance into 
the professional educator's head. It certainly had n't done 
so up to 1906. 

A better considered and more intelligent system will 
doubtless in due time evolve itself; but when, or how, re- 
mains to be seen. I only now know that so far as producing 
the ideal results on individual minds standing in crying 
need of direction, the system in use was very bad fifty years 
ago, and I have every reason to believe that the system now 
in use is yet worse. In my time, its methods were mechani- 
cal; it turned out nothing Individually artistic. I see now 
that I was myself a very fair bit of clay for the wheel had the 
potter had an eye and a hand for his work. I might have 
been shaped into something rather good. As it was, I was 



Youth and Education 3 7 

tumbled into the common hopper, to emerge therefrom as 
God willed. No instructor produced, or endeavored to pro- 
duce, the slightest impression on me; no spark of enthu- 
siasm was sought to be infused into me. In that line, I 
owed far more to Charles Sumner than to all of the Harvard 
professors put together. And it was exactly the same with 
my father before me. From the recitation room I got as 
nearly as I can now see almost nothing at all; from the col- 
lege atmosphere and the close contact with a generation of 
generous young fellows containing then, as the result showed, 
infinite possibilities I got much of all that I have ever had 
of quickening and good. So, after all, I owe a great debt to 
Harvard. 

Leaving Harvard for good and all in June, 1856, I was, as 
all well-disposed young men of narrow vision and common- 
sense direction from outside then were, full of the idea of 
"getting to work," as the cant term went. Some of my 
friends, including Stephen Perkins, went to Europe. Per- 
haps I should have done well to go with them; but on that 
point I am not clear. Indeed, I doubt. I was not a mature 
young fellow, with a native sense of dignity and responsi- 
bility. I did not have the social faculty; I failed to impress 
others with a sense of my being "a young man of promise." 
So, if I had then gone abroad, apart from a pleasant experi- 
ence and a stock of memories, I doubt if I should have 
brought much back with me. I was not only young, but 
immature. 



II 

LAW AND POLITICS 

But now came educational blunder number seven; and 
another bad one. Having no particular sense of a special 
vocation, I almost as a matter of course turned to the law. 
It went without saying. Doing so, I ought to have entered 
the Harvard Law School; passed through the full course 
there; and then gone into the office of some law firm in active 
practice. Cambridge was, however, associated in my mind 
with dissipation and literary idleness, and I was "full of 
high purpose" — I wanted to buckle down to real work! 
So, through my father and his political associations, I got 
myself taken into the office of Dana and Parker; and there 
I reported myself as a student in September, after my grad- 
uation in June. I made a mistake in not going to the Law 
School, and taking hold of the profession I meant to follow 
in a thoughtful, sensible way; but, if I was going into any 
office at all, I made no mistake in selecting that of R. H. 
Dana and F. E. Parker. They were two men with whom 
personal contact was in itself an education. That Mr. Dana 
impressed himself deeply upon me, I long afterwards showed 
by becoming his biographer; and, in my Life of Dana ^ I set 
forth my opinion of F. E. Parker. His classmate, T. W. 
Higginson, has also spoken of him In his volume entitled 
Cheerful Yesterdays; and, though Higginson and I were very 
differently constituted, we set much the same estimate on 
Parker. On the whole, as I never could have been a lawyer 

* II. chap. 2. 



Law and Politics 3 9 

and must, under any circumstances, have drifted out of 
what was to me a most unattractive calling, perhaps it was 
quite as well that I passed that educational period not at 
Cambridge, but in Court Street. I was at least in daily con- 
tact with active life, and rubbing up against men of high 
character and marked ability. 

During these years my brother John and I lived at home, 
and were a great deal in society, that is, as young men of 
the party-going, dancing set. Of Boston society, as it then 
was and, I believe, still is, I can say little that is pleasant. 
It was a boy-and-girl institution, the outgrowth of ten gen- 
erations of colonial and provincial life, about as senseless, 
unmeaning and frivolous as could by any possibility be 
imagined. It was essentially a Sanuny and Billy, a Sallie 
and Nellie affair; very pleasant and jolly for young people; 
but, so far as the world and its ways were concerned, little 
more than a big village development. In fact, I may say 
that in the course of my life I have tried Boston socially on 
all sides : I have summered it and wintered it, tried it drunk 
and tried it sober; and, drunk or sober, there's nothing in 
it — save Boston ! The trouble with Boston socially is that 
it is an eddy, so to speak, in the great world-current. With 
powerful formative traditions it has a keen self-appreciation. 
For strangers, well introduced, it is a delightful city; for a 
life-long resident it is curiously conventional and home. 
Not only are the social circles sharply divided, but the ages 
do not mix. The old people and the young stand apart; and 
Billy and Bobby and Sue do not feel at home in company 
with outsiders of distinction, or their domestic elders. It 
has always been so. In Boston, the salon has ever proved 
impossible. We go to formal dinners, and we pass our even- 



40 Charles Francis Adams 



ings at home. The young people frolic and dance; the old 
retire, or are retired — shelved! And so, of my early Boston 
social life I have little to say save that it was not improving; 
but still I had a very good time — a time brought to an abrupt 
close in 1861, when I was swept away by the torrent of war. 
My great friends during those years were my brother 
John — with whom my relations were the closest possible, 
for we lived together — my former tutor, Frank Palfrey, 
and Arthur Dexter. Both of these latter were men of abil- 
ity; but the former had a curiously frivolous vein running 
through his composition, which interfered greatly with his 
success and standing; while Dexter, though really a man of 
superior order, was, for himself, most unhappily compounded. 
There ran all through him a false strain. In many respects 
brilliant, he lacked persistence and character. He perpetu- 
ally rang false. I knew him intimately for many years; but 
our ways gradually parted. He died early in 1897; we had 
long before become almost strangers. But at this period 
(1856-1861) we saw a great deal of each other; and, on the 
whole, I derived benefit from him. In the summer, my 
brother John and I lived at Quincy, where we began to take 
great interest in tree-planting, and he, then and later, for- 
ested Mt. Wollaston. Meanwhile, my aptitude was show- 
ing how little real force there was to it, for it was lying 
almost wholly dormant. I wrote continually — diaries, let- 
ters, abstracts of books I read, and, now and then, an at- 
tempt at a review article; but there was no systematic effort; 
and I really did not in any degree realize what careful, thor- 
ough, painstaking work was. The fact is, I was simply slow 
in maturing. At last, in the early months of 1861 — dur- 
ing the winter which followed the election of Lincoln — I 



Law and Politics 4. i 



braced up, and, one day, went out to see Russell Lowell, 
then a professor at Harvard and editor of the Atlantic, and 
asked him if he would let me write an article for that maga- 
zine on a semi-political topic. He was then living, with his 
wife, at IVIrs. Upham's lodging-house. He received me very 
cordially — for he was then a man of only about forty — 
and I lunched with the two, talking very fast, and, I am 
afraid, airing my views somewhat ingenuously. He encour- 
aged me to make the attempt; and so I set to work and wrote 
my first well-considered, carefully prepared and laboriously 
copied-out magazine paper. I have written many such 
since, but that one — "The Reign of King Cotton" in the 
Atlantic for April, 1861 — marked in me a distinct stage of 
development. I was getting my bearings. It proved quite a 
success. It caused me to be recognized as a young man of 
somewhat nebulous promise. 

Aleanwhile, as a lawyer I was not proving myself a success. 
I showed just what I was by getting myself admitted to the 
bar after about twenty months of desultory reading, and 
decently prepared for practice in my own eyes only. George 
T. Bigelow was then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
the Commonwealth; or became so shortly after. I knew 
Judge Bigelow well, we being neighbors at Quincy, and I 
was on terms of intimacy with his family. One day, without 
consulting any one, I took it into my head that I would be 
examined for entrance at the bar; and, what followed shows 
the loose way in which admissions were then granted. I 
asked Bigelow to examine me. He ought to have asked me 
a few questions as to my length of study, etc., and then, in 
a good-natured, friendly way advised me to wait a while 
longer. Instead of that, however, he told me to come at a 



42 Charles Francis Adams 

certain time Into the Supreme Court room, where he was 
then holding court; and he would examine me. I did so, and 
the clerk of the court at his direction handed me a list of 
questions, covering, perhaps, one sheet of letter paper. I 
then sat down at the clerk's desk, and wrote out answers to 
such of them as I could. I remember well that on several 
of the subjects in question I knew absolutely nothing. A 
few days later I met the Judge on the platform of the Quincy 
station, and he told me I might come up to the court room 
and be sworn in. I did so; and became a member of the bar. 
I was no more fit to be admitted than a child. The whole 
thing illustrated my supreme Incompetence, and the utterly 
Irregular way in which admission to the bar was then ob- 
tained. At the same time I rather imagine that Bigelow's 
personal knowledge of me had something to do with it. He 
had confidence in my coming out all right; if he did, he cer- 
tainly acted on his faith. 

This must have been somewhere In 1858. Anyhow, I at 
once left Dana and Parker, taking with me not much law 
but many pleasant memories; and I have often since, with 
some sense of humiliation, tried to imagine what the keen- 
sighted, incisive Parker thought of me and my proceedings. 
I would even now like to know; for In my whole life I have 
since met no man who saw Into the true inwardness of per- 
sons and things as It was given to Francis E. Parker to see. 
In my case, however, it made not much difference. I was 
not cast for a lawyer; and I rather Imagine Parker fully took 
the fact in. I never took to the law; and I am sure the law 
never came my way. However, I tried, establishing myself 
first with my brother John, and later In a gloomy, dirty den 
in my father's building, 23 Court Street; and there I sat for 



Law and Politics 43 



the next year and a half, trying to think that I was going 
through an apprenticeship. I did n't reaHze it, but I was a 
round peg trying to get into a square hole. Still, my father 
was satisfied. He, now, was in Congress, and the home had 
been broken up; much to my satisfaction. I liked the irre- 
sponsible, Bohemian life; though I didn't know it, I was 
tired of conventional Boston. My father saw it all, however, 
in a wholly different light. In his eyes I was passing through 
a very critical period in a way which promised much; I 
would soon acquire steady business habits, and settle down 
into a respectable and useful member of society. But now, 
great events were immediately impending. 

In '59, I think it was, we had the^" Concord muster." All 
of us young men were then in the militia ; and a most useful 
preliminary training it afterguards proved. We were drilling 
the whole time. I was a member of the City Guard; and 
then adjutant of the First Regiment of Infantry; and then 
a private in the Fourth Battalion. In this way I picked up 
the manual, and learned how to march. Moreover, after 
my father went to Washington in the autumn of '59, I went 
on there to pay him a visit, and I saw something of the 
Washington world, and the great movement of events. I 
was now twenty-four, and began to get a little Into the 
touch of society. I by no means lacked self-confidence; but 
I was also self-conscious, and lamentably deficient In that 
nice social faculty which, In a place like Washington, so 
tides a young man along. None the less, I availed myself to 
a certain extent of my opportunities. 

I remember very well the Senate and House of that time. 
Neither body impressed me. The House was a national 
bear-garden; for that was, much more than now, a period 



44 Charles Francis Adams 

of the unpicturesque frontiersman and the overseer. Sec- 
tional feeling ran high, and bad manners were conspicu- 
ously in evidence; whiskey, expectoration and bowie-knives 
were the order of that day. They were, indeed, the only kind 
of "order" observed in the House, over which poor old Pen- 
nington, of New Jersey, had as a last recourse been chosen 
to preside, probably the most wholly and all-round incom- 
petent Speaker the House ever had. It was altogether in- 
describable, and I remember my father laughing until he 
had to wipe the tears from his eyes over an account I gave 
of the usual procedure of the body of which he was a mem- 
ber, in a letter I wrote to the Milford Ga'Lette, a paper in his 
district. I had then the cacoeihes scribendi, and it found a 
rather injudicious and somewhat risky vent in newspaper 
correspondence; but I redeemed my lack of judgment by a 
strong sense of boyish humor. " It is n't very respectful," 
said my father, "but it's dreadfully true." "Of all the dis- 
orderly bodies I ever saw," I wrote, "the present House of 
Representatives, under its efhcient presiding officer, is by 
many degrees the most disorderly. When nothing of interest 
is before the House, it is simply a general hubbub. W'hen 
anything of interest is going on, the performances usually 
resolve themselves into a concerted piece by any six mem- 
bers at once, with at intervals a general chorus of the whole 
House. Then, indeed, confusion does become confounded, and 
Speaker Pennington rides upon the storm; not, indeed, direct- 
ing, but, with uplifted voice and gavel, acting rather as maestro, 
or grand conductor, to this thundering song of the nation." 
That House was an angry, quarrelsome body, full to over- 
flowing of men who subsequently became "Confederate 
Brigadiers." Among them I specially recall Roger A. Pryor, 



Law and Politics 45 

of Virginia, who "petered out" during the RebeUion, and 
subsequently came North and quietly took to the law in 
Brookl}^n, New York, then a pronounced fire-eater, a typi- 
cal Southerner of that period. I remember him at one of 
Buchanan's receptions, a rather tall and lank Virginian, 
stalking about with a lady on each arm. In shabby black, 
of course, and ugly as a stone fence, with tallowy, close- 
shaven features, and prominent high cheek-bones, his eyes 
had a hard, venomous look, while his flowing locks, brushed 
carefully back behind his ears, fell well down over his coat 
collar, innocent of the shears. He was representative of a 
large class — men who were just spoiling for a fight. They 
had it, too! and, before they got through, had a belly-full! 
But never on this earth did human beings more richly de- 
serve the complete, out-and-out thrashing that those men 
then coveted, and aftenvards had. 

None the less tempora mutantur, et, etc., etc., even as re- 
spects that community and those very men. Long subse- 
quently, as a result of my two addresses on General Lee, 
that at Chicago in 1902, and that at Lexington in 1907, I 
became a very popular character in Virginia; and the change 
of sentiment was manifested many times and in ways very 
gratifying to me. Even Roger A. Pryor assumed a pleasant 
personal aspect. I first met him face to face in New York, 
December 9, 191 1 — just fifty years later. He was then 
manifestly a very old man, softened by experience and 
domestic affliction, for he had lost a most promising son, 
already professionally far advanced. It was at a reception 
given by the New York Genealogical Society to old John 
Bigelow, who died just one year later. I had agreed to read 
a paper on the occasion, and Judge Pryor came expressly 



46 Charles Francis Adams 

to hear me. I recognized him, sitting on one of the front 
benches, the moment I came into the room; and at once 
went and introduced myself to him. He was plainly grati- 
fied; and so was I at seeing him there. On both sides, all 
the old feeling was gone. In the quieter rays of a setting 
sun, I like to think it was so! 

Of H. Winter Davis I saw a good deal that winter. He 
was a man of very different type; the extremely gentle- 
manly representative of the Baltimore "Plug-uglies" as 
they were called. He died a few years later, having become 
an extremist among the Union men. I don't know what his 
game was; but, with him, I imagine It was all a game. A 
man of medium size, very boyish in appearance, with thick, 
dark curling hair, cut short, a small moustache and a dark 
complexion, he had a quiet manner and was extremely care- 
ful in his dress. I heard him deliver from the floor of the 
House one of the most effective, if not the most effective 
speech I ever listened to. That day he followed Lamar, of 
Mississippi, whom, long afterwards, I knew much better. 
Lamar at that period looked the Southern college professor 
— lank, tall, bearded, long-haired and large-featured. Of 
both of these men — Davis and Lamar — my brother Henry 
has much to say in his volume The Education of Henry 
Adams, and his means of observation were far better and 
closer than mine. ^ This was not so with some others. John 
Sherman was a case In point. He was then by far the most 
noticed man on the floor of the House, having been sud- 
denly brought Into much prominence In the long struggle 
for possession of the Speaker's chair. Then In his first vigor, 

* His account of Henry W. Davis is in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings^ 
XLIII. 660. 



Law and Politics 47 



John Sherman was a young-looking man of the Ohio type, 
tall and slender, with black hair and beard, keen eyes and 
a large nose. His face was expressive of character and deci- 
sion, and he had the reputation of being a fighter in every 
sense of the word. I saw something of him in 1 860-61 — 
much more years later — and he edified me by telling me 
on one occasion that, in politics, "he made it a rule always 
to act with his party; on great matters from principle, and 
on small matters from policy." He certainly followed his 
rule throughout his public life; and he was more than forty 
consecutive years in position at Washington. I heard of his 
death (1900) while passing through Chicago. 

The Senate was, however, in 1860-61 far the more inter- 
esting body; and I then made very fair use of my advan- 
tages. Seward was the leader on the Republican side; 
though, as one looked down from the gallery, the only man, 
I remember, whose face and bearing, whose figure and the 
air of large refinement about him, seemed to me impressive 
was Mr. Sumner. He certainly always oflFered a notable 
exception to the prevailing commonplace, and coarseness of 
fibre, both mental and physical. Douglas, of Illinois, was 
very much in evidence, "a squab, vulgar little man, with an 
immense frowsy head." Mason, of Virginia — after\vards 
my father's vanquished opponent in England — also at- 
tracted my attention from the first, "a large, handsome 
man, not unpleasant to look at," as, dressed ostentatiously 
in a grey suit of Virginia homespun, he appeared to own the 
Senate-chamber. Of Senator Fessenden, of Maine, I at that 
time saw a good deal, calling on him at his hotel-room on 
Sunday afternoons, when he evidently was gratified at my 
attention and glad of company in his boarding-house soli- 



48 Charles Francis Adams 

tude. He impressed me as a man of natural refinement and 
decided force — every inch a Senator. He talked to me of 
my grandfather, with whom he had served in the House, 
and, for whom, as did all those men — his contemporaries 
— he expressed a keen admiration. Fessenden left on me, 
however, a sense of a dreariness and solitude in life, as I 
found him always sitting there in that forlorn private "par- 
lor" of a Washington boarding-house hotel, as Washington 
hotels then were — unkempt barracks, spotted along the 
north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to 
the Treasury. They all had the third-rate, Southem- 
slouchy aspect and atmosphere. That may have been a 
period of high thinking; it was certainly one of plain living; 
and there was in Washington a noticeable absence of the 
more ordinary elegancies of civilized life; its luxuries were 
undreamed of. The "mess" and the Southern boarding- 
house were in order, and accepted. They knew nothing 
better; but Senator Fessenden's old-time hotel — furnished 
sitting-room with its bed-room attachment, devoid of any 
pretence of life's amenities and attractions — impressed me 
with a sense of neither domesticity nor taste. I suppose, 
however, it compared fairly well with what he was then 
accustomed to at home, in Maine; but in all respects the 
Washington of that period was in strange contrast with the 
Washington of this. The Civil War marked the dividing line. 
Recurring to Fessenden and what he told me of my grand- 
father, Jefferson Davis was on that topic the most out- 
spoken of all I met. I do not, indeed, with the exception of 
Joshua R. Giddlngs, remember any public man of that epoch 
who seemed to feel such a genuine sense of appreciation for 
J. Q. Adams as Jefferson Davis, and he repeatedly put him- 



Law and Politics 49 

self on record on the subject. Davis, by the way, impressed 
me that winter more agreeably than any Southern man I 
met. I did not see him again until, in May, 1885, I called 
on him at his house at Belvoir, near New Orleans; but to 
me he was a distinctly attractive as well as interesting per- 
sonality. Of medium height and spare of figure, he had an 
essentially Southern face, but he was very much of a gen- 
tleman in his address — courteous, unpretending and yet 
quietly dignified. A man in no way aggressive, yet not to be 
trifled with. I instinctively liked him; and regret extremely 
that it was not my good fortune, then or later, to see more 
of him. 

Physically, Washington was then curiously unkempt, the 
wide, half-built, unpaved streets being alternately oceans 
of mud or deep in dust. A dirtier city materially — "Nig- 
ger" — it would not have been easy to imagine; while, so- 
cially, it was quite innocent of "style." Among those in 
public life very few had houses of their own, and those of 
such as had them were unpretentious — modest to a degree. 
There were a few private carriages, but no equipage. The 
entertainment was of the simplest. The social element was 
altogether Southern in sympathy and in expression; and, 
as a young man, I am forced to say that the inducements to 
flirtation sometimes extended by certain of the young ladies 
were of a nature not usual in more conventional centres — 
they were of the jolly-girl brand. My now destroyed diaries 
bore witness to the fact that on more than one occasion 
I did not know what to do, or which way to look; and ig- 
nored what I did not dare reciprocate. Miss Harriet Lane 
then presided over the White House; and, of wholly another 
sort, she did it very well. Young, handsome, dignified and 



5 o Charles Francis Adams 

imposing, she bore herself as became her position, having, 
beside a London experience, a well-developed natural, social 
faculty. I was presented to her at one of the White House 
receptions of that very simple and most democratically un- 
conventional period when the White House entertainments, 
conducted absolutely without rule or regulation, were 
thronged by people of both sexes, dressed each one as his 
or her means or fancy directed. As respects Miss Lane, I 
was deeply impressed by the fact that, the next time I met 
her, she addressed me by name. It was close upon forty 
years later. I then once more found myself in the same 
room with her. She was now an elderly lady; a white-haired, 
childless widow, living in Washington ; she was pointed out 
to me at a wedding reception, and I " tried it on," going 
up and expressing my disbelief in any possible recollection 
of me on her part. But the old social faculty was there. 
She at once called me by name. Through what process she 
instinctively worked the problem out or by what mental 
action she divined, I do not know; but that she should have 
remembered both face and name is not supposable. It was 
an instance of the exercise of a social faculty which I never 
possessed in any degree, and the absence of which has been 
in my case a badly felt handicap throughout life in many 
ways. Few things do I envy the possession of in others more 
than the faculty of remembering faces or placing names. 

Subsequently, during the first winter of my later Wash- 
ington life, I saw a good deal of Mrs. Johnson, and our rela- 
tions became exceptionally friendly. The fact that I had been 
part of the ante-bellum Washington of her White House 
days constituted a sort of bond of kindliness between us. 
Hence her death a year or two later was for me an appre- 



Law and Politics 5 1 



ciable loss — Washington became the poorer because of her 
decease. There are frequent and admiring mentions of Miss 
Lane, as she then was, in Hawthorne's Our Old Home: Eng- 
lish Sketches, and Mrs. Johnson could certainly have counted 
me among her obliged admirers. She is a gracious memor)^ 

My two winter visits to Washington in i860 and 1861 
were my only social experiences outside of Boston until 
after the war. They were of great educational benefit to 
me, something I of all things needed. I there came in con- 
tact with men, and distinguished men; and I met women, 
and not girls. In Boston there was no political element in 
social life; and no foreign element. In Washington, you met 
interesting men and some clever women; and conversation 
sometimes rose above the level of society small-talk. 

Meanwhile, at the law I was in these years doing abso- 
lutely nothing, making no progress. Regular in my habits, 
I was constantly at my office; but business would not come 
my way; and, naturally, I got discouraged. I kept writing, 
if I did not publish; but — I am sorry to say it, though I 
see it clearly now — I had not the native force to break 
through the barriers, and strike out in some line for myself. 
I remained a round peg in a square hole. I would now give 
much, if I could look back on some virile action of my own 
at that time; an attempt, even though it had been a failure. 
It simply was not in me; and I went along, stupidly adhering 
to the old precedents and traditions, just as if I were not a 
young man, with a great, untried world all about me. I was 
quite lacking in both aggressive initiative and correct fore- 
cast. 

In the summer of i860, however, came the monitions of 
great impending change; though I quite failed to read the 



5 2 Charles Francis Adams 

signs aright. In the long, hot summer of i860, as we were 
getting into the swing of that lurid, red-painted political 
canvass which proved the prologue to the war, Governor 
Seward one day turned up in Boston, coming from the 
eastward. Just defeated at Chicago, Seward then showed 
a real bigness. Nursing no sense of disappointment, he 
came out in large, earnest support of the cause, and its 
exponent who had been preferred to him. With a clear 
eye, though that of an astute politician, to the unknown 
and unforeseeable future, he was carefully cultivating rela- 
tions with my father, seeing In him I imagine a much-needed 
New England political counterpoise to the distrustful and 
impracticable Sumner. He had, I think — going back to 
what took place in "the forties" — sized my father; and, 
almost alone of the public men of the period, he had "sized" 
him correctly. So now he turned up suddenly in Boston; 
singled my father out for special notice; and came out to 
Quincy to pass a day. Seward was then at the highest point 
of reputation and political prominence he ever attained. As 
a political factor he was of the first class; and he now pro- 
posed to my father, that he and I — I having met him in 
Washington — should join him in an electioneering tour 
through the Northwest in the coming month of September. 
I eagerly caught at the idea, and prevailed on my father to 
fall into it. We went, and it proved a considerable episode 
in my life. I saw the West for the first time, and moved 
among men. 

During that summer also I saw a good deal of Charles 
Sumner, and very pleasantly. We none of us in the least 
suspected it; but for the old intimacy it was the beginning of 
the end. He was then in great spirits. Physically, he had 



Law and Politics 5 3 

recovered from the Brooks assault, and was In the full swing 
of political movement. In June he had delivered in the 
Senate his long and carefully prepared, but most unphllo- 
sophical, speech entitled by him the "Barbarism, of Slavery." 
This effort of his had long been fore-shadowed and was 
loudly heralded; but I am glad to say that, my great personal 
admiration for Sumner non obstante^ my mental vision was 
not now obscured. Of this speech I at the time wrote: "I 
have steadily stood up for It, and defended and endorsed 
everything in it; yet. In my heart of hearts, this speech is 
heavy proof that Sumner is not nearly so great a man as I 
had supposed and hoped. He had a great chance; and he 
was not equal to the occasion. After being stricken down 
as he was, with four years of subsequent Illness, he should 
have risen In the Senate-chamber grand and magnificent; — 
something more than mortal, above revenge or spite, he 
should not have 'poured forth abuse as from a cart,' even on 
institutions. He should have dealt only In great principles, 
not In newspaper paragraphs and book clippings; he should 
have said that which would have offended no man, and yet 
would have touched and appealed to all. This he has not 
done. His speech Is a farrago of newspaper Items collected 
with toil and codified with reflection, but not marked by 
good temper or pervaded by Inspiration. It Is the able ex 
'parte argument of an ordinary mortal, and by no means the 
crowning effort of a great genius." I have not since read, 
and never again shall read — as, I opine, will few others — 
that bitter, railing indictment of June 4, i860; but I Imagine 
I was not far wrong In this contemporaneous estimate of It. 
A few days later, however, I came across Sumner charac- 
teristically and pleasantly; and In a way curious for me now 



54 Charles Francis Adams 

(1900) to notice, looking over my diary of that time, having 
wholly forgotten the incident. It had a noticeable bearing 
on the address I had just been delivering at Madison, show- 
ing how I revived in the summer of 1900 an historical paral- 
lel which I had worked out in detail forty years before, and 
then retained no faintest recollection of. My entry of July, 
i860, was as follows: 

"For the last two years I have been industriously labor- 
ing on a parallel, covering the slavery question, between my 
grandfather and Calhoun. This last week my thunder has 
been stolen, and rolled louder than I ever could roll it, and 
that by no less a person than Charles Sumner, of the United 
States Senate. In a political address in New York last week, 
he began with that parallel exactly as I had thought it out; 
and, when I had read what he said, a vague impression came 
across me that I had one day at Washington, while dining 
with him at home, run the parallel, and stated the relative 
influence of the two men on our own time. My father pres- 
ently came into the office, and I spoke to him of it. He re- 
membered the conversation perfectly; and advised me for 
the future to be more careful of my gems, if I did n't want to 
have them stolen. My only desire was to give his dues to 
my grandfather, so I can't say I care much for the thing; 
but I think Sumner might have done it rather better; and, 
if ever I now carry out the parallel, as I certainly meant to 
do, I shall be said to perfect only, and not originate." 

Queer coincidence! There is the parallel, to-day, in Sum- 
ner's Works} I have looked it up since coming across this 
diary entry of my own; and forty years afterwards in the 
Madison address, I harked back to my own old inspiration, 

» 1. 193, 323. 



L^aw and Politics 5 5 



and, for the first time, presented my grandfather's record. 
And, now, what do I care for Sumner? 

But my diary record did not end there. Just a fortnight 
later (July 29, i860) I went on as follows: 

"Sumner dined here yesterday, and came out evidently 
primed on some subject. I met him at the [Quincy] station; 
and, as we walked over the hill home, out it came — ' We 
must have an edition of my grandfather's political speeches 
— this year — at once!' I read him an extract of a note I 
had had from Mr. Giddings, a day or two before, in which 
he [Giddings] speaks approvingly of the parallel in Sum- 
ner's Cooper Institute speech. On hearing it Sumner laughed 
loud, and smote me on the shoulder with immense delight. 
He seemed greatly amused at the idea of my own idea com- 
ing back to me in this way, through him, with the stamp of 
approval from J. R. Giddings. After dinner, he went off 
again on the subject of the speeches; his parallel had pro- 
voked discussion and comment, had been ridiculed; he knew 
he was right; but where were his authorities.? We must have 
an edition of the speeches at once, we must get those at least 
between hard covers! My father thought the time had not 
yet come; my grandfather, when brought forward as a char- 
acter in history, had best be brought forward as a whole, 
etc., etc. I cannot agree with him, except in part. A man's 
historical character must rest on evidence; and it seems to 
me the evidence on which my grandfather's ultimate posi- 
tion in the history of his time must rest cannot too soon 
be brought before the public. A collection of his political 
speeches and reports, if published now, would be of interest 
as bearing on the questions of the day, and be read and re- 
ferred to now more perhaps than at any future time. I have 



56 Charles Francis Adams 

no idea, however, that such a collection will be issued, and 
my grandfather must wait yet a while for justice." 

This I now (191 2) find rather an interesting record of a 
talk. In less than two years from that time, emancipation 
under the war power was a living question, and my grand- 
father's utterances were rummaged up. Fourteen months 
later, Sumner himself was working up the partial record on 
the subject, which now appears in his Works ; ^ for which he 
was indebted to a communication from me in the Boston 
Transcript of September 11, 1861. On the 1st of January, 
1863, Lincoln's proclamation took effect; and only now, 
forty years later, has an incomplete record of my grand- 
father's enunciation of the doctrine of emancipation under 
the war power been put on file.^ Sumner was wholly right. 
An edition of those speeches was in the summer of i860 
greatly needed ; and they would have appeared in the very 
nick of time. I ought to have brought them out. He meant 
to incite me so to do. Again, I was not equal to the occasion 
offered me. 

At this period, however, I was seeing a good deal in an 
intimate way of some men of considerable mark; and I am 
glad to be able to say that, in this respect, I did appreciate 
my privilege. I think, also, I stood fairly well in their esti- 
mate. I was very much younger; I did not realize how much, 
or have a correct sense of my own position, failing properly 
to subordinate myself. But I was twenty-five, and ought to 
have matured more than I had. R. H. Dana was then forty- 
five, and absent on his trip round the world taken to escape 
a break-down, threatened from overwork and the utter dis- 
regard by him of all sanitary rules. Had I been awake to 

^ VI. 19-23. ' 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xv. 436. 



Law and Politics 5 7 

my opportunities, I would have gone with him; but, In fact, 
so doing never even occurred to me. I Vas accomplishing 
nothing at home — eating my heart out in a clientless office, 
and wasting my time in ball-rooms; and here was an oppor- 
tunity never to be had again, and I simply did not see it! 
It has been so all through life — unequalled chances missed; 
that with Dana in i860 one of the most educational and 
maturing. Sumner I saw much of; he was then In his fiftieth 
year. Seward was ten years older, and at his best. Dr. Pal- 
frey, occupied with his history, was older yet; bom in May, 
1796, he was In his sixty-fifth year, one year younger than 
I now (1900) am. My father was fifty-three. I was a young 
fellow, eager and aspiring; intensely interested in politics; 
in a social way healthily frivolous; and trying to follow a 
profession for which I had no natural aptitude. In fact, 
I was blindly seeking for my bearings. 

I find In my diary, which was little more than an empty 
record of aspirations, comments on current events and social 
dissipations — many of the last distinctly the reverse of 
creditable, for I was, I do not regret to say, a very human 
youth — a few, a very few, notes of conversations, etc., not 
wholly without interest still. For instance, Seward was then 
rapidly establishing himself In the estimate of all of us as 
the Republican leader — the philosophical politician, states- 
man and guide of the party of the future. I shall revise and 
review this estimate presently, in the full light of fifty years 
later; but, in the summer of i860, he certainly bore himself 
well. In a short speech he made on his arrival In Boston at 
this time, he took occasion to declare himself a political 
disciple of J. Q. Adams — which, except in theory, he dis- 
tinctly was not — and while at Quincy, sitting on the piazza 



5 8 Charles Francis Adams 

and puffing at his everlasting cigar, he talked freely about 
himself, J. Q. Adams, and public life. My brother John re- 
minded him of a remark he (John) heard him make the pre- 
vious winter in Washington to the effect that no man should 
continue in the Senate more than twelve years; and, ob- 
serving that he had said this before Lincoln's nomination, 
inquired if he was of the same mind still. "Yes," said Sew- 
ard, "I still think so. I shall have been in the Senate twelve 
years ; and, in that time, I have seen Benton die a vagrant, 
pining to get back there; Calhoun die, chagrined, disap- 
pointed, ambitious and unsatisfied; declaring almost in his 
last words in the Senate that he would not speak to me; 
Clay die, eating his heart away, and naming the Committee 
of the Senate which was to carry him home to Kentucky, 
designating Hamilton Fish, so as to cut me off; and I am 
clear that unless a man can come out on some new course 
in this country, appear in some new character, as did J. Q. 
Adams, he must fail as those men failed. As compared with 
J. Q. Adams, Calhoun was a man of talent and originality; 
but he was visionary; whereas Mr. Adams, equal to him in 
other respects, was a practical statesman. Calhoun, for in- 
stance, wrote a book about the Constitution in which he 
advocated a dual executive and a balance of power between 
the free and slave states, than which what could be more 
absurd. But to imitate J. Q. Adams was not possible for 
most men, because there were few who, like him, loved com- 
bat for combat's sake, and who could thus fight through a 
long life. For himself, he [Seward] thought it much more 
difficult to retire gracefully from public life than to keep in 
it. It was different in Great Britain. There Palmerston had 
been in Parliament perhaps forty years; but in Great Britain 



Law and Politics 5 9 



the same man might be King many times, and there was 
a variety in ParHamentary Ufe which Congress did not af- 
ford." While driving into town, where he was to take his 
train home, I asked him about Webster, Clay and Calhoun, 
with all three of whom he had sat in the Senate. He said 
that, in his judgment, Calhoun was the most eminent of the 
three; "but," he added, "they are all over-rated men; for 
they converted the Senate-chamber into a mere intellectual 
arena for their own struggles. Calhoun had undirected, 
original eloquence; Clay had a fiery, brilliant imagination; 
Webster, brute intellectual force. Calhoun's logic was not 
sound; he led and did not follow it, using it to support a 
pre-conceived theory." 

My diary records that, when we got to town that day and 
were waiting on the platform of the station for the start- 
ing of the train, we found there only a very few enthusiastic 
souls to look at the famous New Yorker, "and I couldn't 
but agree with one or two of them that a more unpromising 
looking subject for a great man than Seward did n't stand 
on the depot platform at that time. Small, rusty in aspect, 
dressed in a coat and trousers made apparently twenty 
years ago and by a bad tailor at that, lolling against the par- 
tition as he talked with my father or those about him, with 
a face and head in no way striking, who would have put his 
hand on that man — small and insignificant — as the first 
statesman in the country?" 

The very next day Dr. Palfrey chanced to dine with us 
at Quincy, on his way to Plymouth, where he proposed to 
spend a few days in walking along the shore, to familiarize 
himself with it in connection with his history. Sumner came 
out the day after, a curious contrast to Seward, wdth his 



6o Charles Francis Adams 

fine presence and lofty carriage, his careful, well-arranged 
dress, and his deep, rich voice. Sumner was always a dis- 
tinguished-looking man; he had a bearing and presence. He 
was then in excellent spirits, "but evidently disgusted at 
not being more completely backed up by his party in the 
matter of his recent speech, the 'Barbarism of Slavery.'" 
He does not doubt the success of the party; but fears for its 
principles, if those composing it continue so timid in sup- 
port of them. He talked much of Seward, and of the ne- 
cessity of his taking the lead in Lincoln's Cabinet. He told 
us that Seward was much mollified now; but, on his press- 
ing on him that necessity towards the close of the session 
Seward had exclaimed that "not all the angels in Heaven 
nor all the demons in Hell could induce him to subject his 
name for ratification to the votes of twenty-four men on 
that side of the Senate — indicating the side on which the 
Democratic Senators sat." 

My journey that autumn through the West in the train 
of Governor Seward was a noticeable episode in life, and 
had on me a most invigorating effect. I was then somewhat 
run down in bodily health, as well as mentally demoralized. 
Worn out waiting for that legal practice which to me never 
came, I was in great need of change. I was in fact stag- 
nating. We — that is, my father and I — left Quincy on 
Monday, September 3d, joined Mr. Seward's party at Kal- 
amazoo, Michigan, on Friday; went with him to Chicago, 
Milwaukee and Madison; thence to Dubuque, where my 
father left the party, and went home. We got to Quincy, 
Illinois, by rail from Mendota; then crossed Missouri to St. 
Joseph, in i860 the extreme western end of the railroad 
system. We went by steamboat from St. Joseph to Leaven- 



Law and Politics 6 1 

worth; and from Leavenworth we drove by ambulance to 
Lawrence. Returning over the same track, we puffed up the 
dreary Missouri one dull, rainy day late in September, back 
to St. Joseph, whence we crossed to St. Louis by rail. From 
St. Louis we went by way of Springfield to Chicago; and 
at Springfield Mr. Lincoln came into the car, accompanied 
by Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, to pay his respects to Gov- 
ernor Seward. From Chicago we went to Cleveland, and 
thence to Buffalo. IMy journey ended at Auburn, where I 
passed a Sunday at Governor Seward's house, getting home 
on the 9th of October; and a very discontented, homesick 
young barrister I was when I found myself once more back 
in my dismal, clientless oifice! 

During this, to me, most memorable trip Governor Sew- 
ard evinced a uniform kindness and consideration which were 
extraordinary, and are now unaccountable. It was a singular 
party; and one not altogether to be commended to a young 
man. Next to Seward the principal character was General 
James W. Nye — "Nye of Nevada"; and he was a charac- 
ter! He was then a man of only forty-six, a coarse, genial, 
humorous. New York lawyer, stump-speaker and politician. 
He had with him his daughter, a pretty, bright girl of only 
seventeen, with whom I became very intimate during the 
trip ; though I never saw her afterwards until she recognized 
me in a railway car twenty-five years later, and sent her 
husband to ask me to come over to where she was sitting, 
and renew our acquaintance. The General was excellent 
company, and full of stories and experiences, for he had seen 
all phases of life; but his conversation was by no means al- 
ways edifying, and he was a decidedly free liver. Indeed, 
the consumption of liquors and cigars during that trip was 



62 Charles Francis Adams 



out of all cess. I, however, was young, and in no way encum- 
bered with scruples. Seward smoked the whole time; indeed 
my diary of the trip from Mendota to Quincy — a night 
journey by rail — says: "The early morning sun shone on 
Seward, wrapped in a strange and indescribable Syrian 
cashmere cloak, and my humble self, pufhng our morning 
cigars in a baggage-car, having rendered ourselves, as he 
expressed it, 'independent on this tobacco question.'" 
When it came to drinking, Seward was, for a man of sixty, 
a free liver; and at times his brandy-and-water would excite 
him, and set his tongue going with dangerous volubility; but 
I never saw him more aifected than that — never anything 
approaching drunkenness. He simply liked the stimulus, 
and was very fond of champagne; and when he was loaded, 
his tongue wagged. He was a very considerate, delightful 
travelling companion; and, so far as accomplishing work 
was concerned, his faculty was extraordinary. Seeing him 
the whole time I never could understand where, when or how 
he then prepared the really remarkable speeches he deliv- 
ered in rapid succession. 

That of i860 was my first trip into the great region west of 
Niagara. I have since been over the same ground too often 
to try even to take account of the times, and it has become 
monotonous, even terribly tedious; I was young in i860, 
and it was all new and fresh — my first taste of travel. Trav- 
elling was, however, in its most commonplace and uninter- 
esting estate; for the stage-coach and ambulance had dis- 
appeared, while the railroad appliances were crude, and 
toilet accommodations in their infancy. The picturesque- 
ness of travel was gone; its comforts had not come. There 
were, for instance, no private cars, and the most that any 



Law and Politics 6 3 



railroad company could do was to put an ordinary day- 
coach at Governor Seward's special service. This was quite 
frequently the case; but the eating-houses were wretched, 
and the hotels overgrown taverns. The single picturesque 
episode I saw was by night, on the upper Mississippi. It 
was the wooding-up of river-boats by torch-light, and a 
genuine spectacle — the flames of the pine-knots blazing 
up from the great side braziers lighting the tree-clad shores 
and the red shirts of the hurrying roustabouts. But apart 
from this, and the constant racing and manoeuvring of the 
river-boats to get the lead of each other, the travel by water 
was decidedly tedious, far more so than that by rail, which, 
in its turn, was bad enough. 

Kansas was the most interesting of the regions we visited. 
It was just after the "border-ruflian" excitement, and the 
Territory had not yet become a State. Kansas, the always 
either bleeding or starving, had ceased to be a bone of con- 
tention between the sections, the slave interest silently ad- 
mitting itself defeated; but the scenes of the border-ruffian 
outrages were pointed out and their memory was still fresh. 
Kansas was in i860 but sparsely settled, and the unfortu- 
nate inhabitants were suffering under a prolonged and very 
destructive drought. There seemed no end to their misfor- 
tunes. I believe there was not at that time a mile of railroad 
west of the Missouri; so our journey beyond the river, made 
by ambulance, was delightful as a variety. The river was, 
I remember, so low that we forded the Kaw at Lawrence, 
the water not rising to the horses' bellies. I did not go be- 
yond Lawrence. 

I have spoken of the meeting between Lincoln and Sew- 
ard at Springfield, as our party was passing through Illinois, 



64 Charles Francis Adams 

on the way from St. Louis to Chicago. My diary contained 
an account of it. It was the first time I ever saw Lincoln; 
afterwards I heard him deUver his inaugural; was presented 
to him at a White House reception; and, finally, as an officer 
of a cavalry regiment in the Army of the Potomac, passed 
in review before him once in Virginia. Save that once at 
Springfield, I never really spoke to him. We went through 
to Chicago on the regular train, nor did they give Governor 
Seward a car for himself; when we got to Springfield the train 
was quite full, and our party were occupying seats as ordi- 
nary passengers. "Mr. Lincoln and Judge Trumbull," my 
diary records, "came on board the train. Judge Trumbull 
I had met before in Washington, and again in St. Louis the 
previous day; but 'old Abe' was a revelation. There he was, 
tall, shambling, plain and good-natured. He seemed shy 
to a degree, and very awkward in manner; as if he felt out 
of place, and had a realizing sense that properly the posi- 
tions should be reversed. Seward too appeared constrained." 
Judge Trumbull, between whom and Seward the true sena- 
torial ill-will and cold distrust existed, did the introducing, 
we all standing in the aisle of the car; for no arrangement had 
been made for stopping the train, and we none of us left it. 
There was no demonstration; not a pretence of a reception. 
It was exactly as if a couple of ordinary business men had 
come down to a station to meet some travellers passing 
through, and exchange a few words during a five-minutes 
stop. "Governor Seward, with his usual thoughtfulness on 
such occasions, introduced Mr. Lincoln to all the members 
of the party, and to me among the others. The only remark 
Lincoln made to me was — 'A son of Charles Francis 
Adams.? I am glad to see you, Sir'; but at the same time I 



Law and Politics 65 

saw a look of Interest. Lincoln's face is a good one, and he 
has proved his skill as a debater; but, if I could judge from 
a passing glance at a moment when the man was obviously 
embarrassed, I should say that his eye never belonged to a 
man great in action; it is neither the quick sharp eye of a 
man of sudden and penetrating nature, nor the slow firm 
eye of one of decided will; but it is a mild, dreamy, medita- 
tive eye which one would scarcely expect to see in a suc- 
cessful chief magistrate in these days of the republic. Mais 
nous verronsr 

A few days later, on our way from Chicago to Cleveland, 
we ran across another prominent public man of that period 

— a statesman of the American and western type. It was 
characteristic — characteristic both of the Individuals and 
of the times; though, of course, I am no longer in touch, I 
doubt if it could happen now. Governor Seward went from 
Chicago to Cleveland by night, and I had my first experi- 
ence of the sleeping-car as it had at that time been developed. 
It was a singularly crude, tentative affair, constructed on the 
pattern of the canal-boat cabin; that Is, with a tier of per- 
manent berths on each side of the aisle, practically three 
shelves, one above the other, as I remember. Anyhow, after 
smoking In the baggage-car — the only pretence of a smoker 

— we wriggled into the recesses respectively assigned us; 
and actually fell asleep, though fully dressed. When we got 
to Toledo, I was suddenly waked up by a sound of loud 
cheering, and looked for a midnight reception, for the coun- 
try was then throbbing with excitement. "Instead of a re- 
ception I heard some one rush into the car, and inquire in a 
loud voice, 'Where 's Seward!' The Governor's berth was 
pointed out, the inquirer stating that he was Mr. Douglas, 



66 Charles Francis Adams 

and he at once rushed up to it, thrust the curtains aside, 
and exclaimed, 'Come, Governor, they want to see you; 
come out and speak to the boys!' To this Seward replied 
in a drowsy voice, 'How are you, Judge? No; I can't go out. 
I'm sleepy.' 'Well, what of that?' said Douglas; 'they get 
me out when I'm sleepy.' Seward, however, simply said he 
shouldn't go out; to which Douglas replied, 'Well! if you 
don't want to you shan't,' and withdrew. All this time it 
never entered my head that the intruder was no other than 
'the little Giant' of Illinois, then and in that way conduct- 
ing his Presidential campaign. He had a bottle of whiskey 
with him, and, as he left the car, he stopped to take a drink; 
and, next morning, I was told he was plainly drunk." He 
had been having a Democratic meeting at Toledo, and the 
cheering was incident thereto. I asked Seward about it. 
He simply said that it was Douglas's "idea of political cour- 
tesy; but he [Seward] did n't mean to let Douglas exhibit 
him to his [Douglas's] followers, just to make a little politi- 
cal capital for himself. So far as Douglas himself was con- 
cerned, Seward told me that they had always been on the 
most friendly terms. I remarked that Douglas's conduct 
on the floor of the Senate did not always square with that 
fact. 'No,' he replied, 'but Douglas always did what you 
refer to for political effect. Personally, we have always been 
on the most friendly terms.' " So, on this occasion, Douglas, 
a Presidential candidate, had, more than half drunk, rushed 
into that car at midnight, whiskey-bottle In hand, to drag 
Seward, the Premier to be, out of his sleeping-berth, to show 
him in a railroad station to his (Douglas's) political heelers ! 
Our last campaign meeting was at Buffalo; where, I re- 
member, when brought forward as I perpetually was — 



Law and Politics 6 7 



generally under the idea on the part of the audience that it 
was my father — I made my chief oratorical success of the 
trip, really getting out of a very false position quite well. 
Saturday, the 6th of October, we got to Auburn ; and it was 
really pleasant to see Governor Seward as we approached 
the journey's end. It suggested to me poor old Walter 
Scott when he drew near to Abbotsford on his return from 
Italy shortly before his death. So Seward now showed a 
great deal of genuine, kindly human nature. "He seemed 
to enlarge, and to dwell with real affection on every object 
along the road. He told me of the country, and gave me the 
names of the lakes and bridges ; and, when we stopped at 
way stations, he would get out of the train, and look about 
with a homeish air, exchanging greetings with almost every 
man he met. He seemed to know the whole country-side. At 
Cayuga, the local bar-keeper seemed to know him well, and, 
with a grin, produced four pike, fresh from the Lake. *Ah!' 
said Seward, 'just what I want!' and, paying for them, he 
turned them over to me. At Auburn, where we arrived about 
nine o'clock, a noisy throng was waiting for him on the arrival 
of the train. It was not a reception, but merely a friendly 
welcome home. They rushed about him and would let him 
do nothing for himself, until he, greatly pleased, was hustled 
into a coach, and so ended his journey at his own door." 

Seward, in fact, never appeared so well as at home, in 
Auburn. He was there really and unaffectedly simple. He 
walked the streets exchanging greetings with every one; 
and, as he sat at home In his office, every one came in with- 
out form or ceremony, and to every one the same welcome 
was extended. It was, too, all genuine — the relations were 
kindly, unaffected, neighborly. His family relations were 



68 Charles Francis Adams 

admirable. With his wife and daughter, he was affection- 
ate, considerate, unselfish. At Auburn he really left on the 
stranger an impression of individuality approaching great- 
ness. On the whole, looking back at that experience, I think 
I must have acquitted myself more creditably than my 
diary — now destroyed — would lead me to suppose. Cer- 
tainly, Seward and Nye bore with me pleasantly, and I saw 
and talked with them on terms of great freedom. My diary 
contained many long memoranda of conversations, but 
they would have no value; so I do not preserve them. One 
entry only seemed to carry a lesson — and not in any way a 
novel one — in connection with what has since occurred. 
"At breakfast General Nye asked me about my grand- 
father's diary, when would it be published, etc.? Seward 
seemed to think it a dangerous experiment; and expressed a 
hearty concurrence in my remark that the great thing con- 
cerning that diary was 'Who was to edit it.'*' For on the 
editor must depend the great question of extracts, and the 
light in which the diarist would be shown. 'Nothing,' said 
he, 'is so dangerous to the reputation of a public man as a 
diary. Look at Evelyn.^ A most respectable man; a Secre- 
tary of State for Charles II, and see what a picture he has 
left of himself: "Got up this morning and put on my best 
mulberry suit, which cost me ten pounds, and went to the 
office; coming home saw a crowd collected, and, on enquiry 
found it was to witness the execution of Sir Henry Vane; he 
had a large boil on his neck, which he particularly requested 
the executioner not to touch; about fifty persons in attend- 

* Pepys was intended, and Seward has made up his quotation to suit his 
purpose. Some of it may be found in Pepys' account of the execution of Sir 
Henry Vane, in Diary (Bright), ii. 263. 



Law and Politics 6 9 



ance"; and so on. How would I appear if I had kept a 
diary, and recorded all my cursing and swearing on the 19th 
of May last? ' " — a closing reference to the Chicago Con- 
vention of i860 and the nomination of Lincoln. 

As between Evelyn and Pepys, it must be conceded, the 
future Secretary was a trifle mixed; nor was his selection of 
an example of frivolous diary-keeping exactly happy, for 
there are not many eye-witness records of events more in- 
teresting than Pepys' account of the execution of Vane. 

Of the rest of the memorable Presidential canvass of 
i860, it would be useless here to say more. It still stands out 
in my memory with awful clearness; and for me it was dis- 
tinctly educational. It was a demonstrative campaign, and, 
in recalling its events, a lurid glare seems reflected from the 
light of innumerable torches against an ominous gathering 
of heavy lowering clouds. Nor is this a case of present im- 
agination casting a shadow backwards; it was an actuality. 
The campaign of i860 was essentially a midnight demon- 
stration — it was the "Wide-awake" canvass of rockets, 
illuminations and torch-light processions. Every night was 
marked by its tumult, shouting, marching and counter- 
marching, the reverberation of explosives and the rush of 
rockets and Roman candles. The future was reflected on 
the skies. But of the tremendous nature of that future, we 
then had no conception. We all dwelt in a fool's Paradise. 
It is a source of amazement now to realize our own short- 
sightedness; for, however much people may since have edu- 
cated themselves to believe that they foresaw everything, 
and looked for exactly what afterwards took place, it is all 
pure self-deception — cases of wisdom after the event. We 
were, all around, of an average blindness. I know it was so 



7 o Charles Francis Adams 

in the case of Seward and my father; as it was absolutely so 
in that of Sumner. We knew nothing of the South, had no 
realizing sense of the intensity of feeling which there pre- 
vailed; we fully believed it would all end in gasconade. We 
fell into the rather serious error of under-estimating our 
antagonist. For instance, here is my diary entry made ten 
days after the election — the i8th of November, the elec- 
tion having been on the yth: "After election came its results 
— its effect on the South. Hardly were the returns in, when 
there came mutterings of secession from the Slave States, 
which swelled immediately into a shout. This, however, is 
an old story; and we take it philosophically. The only diffi- 
culty is that it has led to a money pressure, and may result 
in a panic. The South is in a bad way; for it has got to face 
a financial and a political crisis at the same time, the one 
aggravating the other. My own impression is that the ex- 
periment of secession is about to be tried; and I hope it will 
be, for the country is weary of the threat. My impression 
also is that the experiment will cost the States which try it 
about ten millions of dollars, and that it will fail ignomini- 
ously. We shall see! Meanwhile we are calm; and, but for 
the money pressure, I believe every one would say: 'Let the 
experiment be tried.' " Two months later I wrote: "Po- 
litically, the world is busy. My letters from Washington 
[which have disappeared since] will some day be of value; 
but it is strange how the back is proportioned to the burden. 
A few months ago the word 'Disunion' threw us into a cold 
tremor; but now, the secession of a State is an event of 
hardly importance enough for a paragraph in a newspaper. 
At last the Northern spirit is roused, and I think there will 
be trouble before we back down. The action of the seceding 



Law and Politics 7 1 



Slave States has put them wholly in the wrong; and, day 
by day, my Impression is growing that the crisis is past, that 
it is mostly sound and fury in the South, that the victory 
is going to rest with us, and that there will be no fight." 

All this was, however, pure self-deception — whistling to 
keep the courage up. In truth it was a wretched time. Ter- 
ribly anxious, we watched the daily papers with feverish 
interest, snatching at every straw. For instance, on the 9th 
of February I wrote: "Tuesday [four days previous] a great 
sense of relief passed over the whole community as it heard 
that Virginia had, almost unanimously, spoken against dis- 
union. In the morning we got a few returns, enough to give 
us the general complexion of the result; and, I confess, my 
heart went up into my mouth, as I read those returns, for 
I felt that the tide of secession was at last turned, and I felt 
confident, and still am confident, that the ebb will be no less 
rapid than was the flow. Decisive news reached us in the 
afternoon. I was skating on Jamaica Pond, all by myself, 
when I noticed the throng of skaters flocking together on the 
further side of the Pond, and almost immediately they began 
to shout and cheer with all their souls. Some one had come 
out bringing a paper with fuller and final returns. The 
tears almost stood in my eyes; and I skated oflF to be alone, 
for I realized that the crisis was actually passed." 



Ill 

WASHINGTON, 1861 

That winter I went on to Washington on the i8th of Feb- 
ruary, and remained until the 13th of March, staying over 
Lincoln's inauguration, of which I was a witness. An in- 
tensely interesting period, we all in a way realized its nature. 
And yet I now wonder at our lack of prescience and general 
incapacity. North and South, to realize even in a remote 
degree the imminence as well as magnitude of the impend- 
ing catastrophe. Something would surely happen to avert 
it! We didn't know what — we couldn't even suggest a 
"something"; but we clung to the childish belief all the 
same. Consequently, neither as a whole nor as individuals 
did we make any preparation. Perhaps it was just as well; 
and yet there was the flag flying over Fort Sumter, with the 
eyes of the whole country directed that way! Still, I cannot 
now but wonder at my own purblindness; for I was at the 
time in position to know fairly well what was going on, be- 
ing in close contact with prominent men, and an interested 
if not a keen observer. Of course I had no share in events or 
influence over them — no one that I know of did. We were, 
as I now see, drifting — drifting into an inevitable and close 
impending war; but this we could not realize, and every day 
brought with it reports, doubts, hopes and fears. My record 
of that period was quite complete, what with diary and let- 
ters, and has now an historical value of the lesser sort; for 
it shows what the plan, so far as they had one, of Seward 
and my father was, as they groped their way along. My 



JVashingtorij 1861 7 3 

father and Governor Seward had by this time been brought 
into close cooperation. Their poHcy was simple, and, as I 
still see it, eminently sensible — though based on an entire 
misapprehension of the facts, and fore-doomed to failure. 
Their scheme was to divide the South, by conciliating the 
northern tier of Slave States, including Virginia especially; 
and, holding them loyal until the tide of reaction, setting in, 
should drive the seceding States into a false position from 
which they would ultimately be compelled to recede. All 
winter the immediate effort had been to gain time until the 
Government had been transferred to the newly elected 
Administration. This essential point had been practically 
assured through the Virginia election. The peaceable inau- 
guration of Lincoln was now practically certain; the next 
question was as to the policy he would adopt when he be- 
came President. The working theory of my father and of 
Seward was that the less extreme Slave States — notably 
Virginia — were in a condition of senseless panic from fear 
of something terrible intended — some invasion of their 
constitutional rights, they did not well know what; but. If 
Lincoln could be safely inaugurated and his Administration 
set quietly in motion without any overt act of force having 
taken place on either side, it was not unreasonable to hope 
this groundless fear would gradually subside, and a strong 
and rising Union reaction could be anticipated. The ques- 
tion would then settle itself, without bloodshed; and once 
for all. Wholly mistaken, as the result showed, it was still, 
at that stage of trouble-development, the only sound the- 
ory to work on, at any rate until the possession of the 
Government was secured. Meanwhile, Lincoln's attitude 
was wholly unknown. His every movement was jealously 



74 Charles Francis Adams 



watched; his utterances closely followed. In Washington, 
the Republican party was divided between the extremists 
and coercionlsts — of whom Sumner and Chase were the 
exponents ; and the conciliators and opportunists — of whom 
Seward and my father were chief. With which side would 
Lincoln be allied ? That, North and South, was the question. 

That winter I saw in Washington a great deal of Seward, 
and I still think he was then at his best — truly a statesman. 
The secession movement had by its force, volume and in- 
tensity taken him by surprise. Failing correctly to appre- 
ciate conditions, he had shown that he was not a statesman 
of the first order; but still his attitude, bearing and utter- 
ances were statesmanlike. Awaiting final developments, he 
was conciliatory, patient, and, outwardly, cool and confi- 
dent. He had formulated a policy based on the careful 
avoidance of a collision and bloodshed until there had been 
ample time allowed for reflection and the saving second- 
thought. The course of subsequent events showed that he 
was wholly wrong in basing any hopes on this misconcep- 
tion of the real attitude and feelings of the South; but, on 
the other hand, they also showed that the day of compro- 
mise was over, and that the attitude of conciliation, while it 
might gain valuable time, endangered nothing. 

In point of fact, as was found out in the following April, 
Seward was laboring under a total misconception of the real 
facts in the case and of the logic of events. If, however, he 
had been endowed with the prophetic gift and read the fu- 
ture as an open book, I do not now see that his policy or line 
of conduct at this juncture would have been other than 
they were in any essential aspect. It was a period of crys- 
tallization. North and South; and any attempt at decisive 



Washington^ 1861 75 



action on either side would have been premature and dis- 
astrous. A more far-seeing statesman would, perhaps, have 
occupied himself, very quietly, in the work of preparation, 
observing the course of events and — biding his time! But 
this again was, practically, the course pursued; the Execu- 
tive Government was still in the old hands — untransf erred; 
Congress was composed largely of future Confederates ; and 
whatever was done had to be done through the States. So, 
even now, I cannot see any error or weakness in Seward's 
attitude and policy. My father acted in close harmony with 
him; totally misapprehending, he also, the nature of the sit- 
uation, and wholly failing to realize the intensity of the forces 
at work. Since the election, LincoLl had hitherto main- 
tained a Sphinxlike silence. He was still at Springfield, while 
Seward, understood to be the coming Secretary of State, had 
found himself compelled to formulate such a policy as he 
might, without any means of knowing the mind of his fu- 
ture chief, or forecasting his policy and action. 

Thus when, in February, 1861, 1 reached my father's house 
there, the situation in Washington was about as chaotic 
as was possible. I see it all now; then it was inscrutable 
to the best informed or the wisest. The simple fact was that 
the ship was drifting on the rocks of a lee shore; nothing 
could save it; this, however, was something none of us could 
bring ourselves to believe. We still clung to a delusive hope 
that the coming change of commanders would alter the 
whole aspect of the situation, and we would work clear. 
Meanwhile, where and what sort of a man was the new com- 
mander.? That conundrum was foremost in all minds. Abra- 
ham Lincoln was an absolutely unknown quantity; and yet 
he was the one possible Deus ex machina I 



76 Charles Francis Adams 



The President-elect had left Springfield on the nth. In 
the interim his silence had been broken; he had been doing 
a good deal of talking. The whole value of my record of 
those days lies in its giving the spirit of the passing time, 
the daily fluctuating hopes and fears of a critical and most 
exciting period. 

I reached Washington on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 
19th of February. My father's house on K Street North- 
west, near Pennsylvania Avenue, was full; so I was quar- 
tered in lodgings at Jost's, on Pennsylvania Avenue — the 
place, by the way, where Russell, of the London Times^ lived 
shortly after, and from the windows of which he observed 
the condition of Washington's main thoroughfare in the 
days succeeding Bull Run. My brother Henry was acting 
as secretary to my father, and he also was living at Jost's, 
where he met me on my arrival. A little later on he wrote 
his own contemporaneous account of these events; and this 
account I, just fifty years later, communicated to the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society; ^ and what I there said fonns 
part of the present record. 

My own narrative, however, begins at my meeting him 
on that Tuesday afternoon in February, 1861. It ran thus: 
"I don't know why, but Henry's very presence seemed to 
exercise a depressing influence on me. Hardly daring to 
put to him a question, I prepared for dinner. We all sat down 
[at my father's house] but, somehow or other, while the 
talking was fast, all present were evidently blue as indigo. 
Evil was in the air; and I felt it. I finally got a clue to the 
trouble in a feminine outburst on the mention of our Presi- 
dent-elect's name, and it became at once apparent that his 

^ Proceedings, xliii. 656. 



TVashingtorij 1861 77 

recent peripatetic oratory on his route to Washington had 
by no means serv^ed to elevate him in the estimation of the 
Adams family circle. Little was said, however, until dinner 
was over; when, at last, my father gave mouth. Temporarily, 
it then appeared, the fat was all in the fire. He did not hesi- 
tate to say that, ten days before, the whole game was in 
Seward's hands; but now it was surrendered again to the 
chapter of accidents. The difficulty was wholly owing to 
Lincoln's folly in not consulting with his official advisers, 
but saying whatever came into his head. Thus he was divid- 
ing his party deplorably — destroying the chance of union 
in action. Seward's position had thus been made lament- 
able; for, with his strength exhausted, he was surrounded 
by opponents, friends and foes; and here now was Lincoln, 
without consultation or understanding with Seward, and 
with no apparent regard for the policy indicated by him, 
showing an ignorance as complete as lamentable of the posi- 
tion of public affairs, fomenting dissensions and jealousies 
already too formidable. Jeopardizing, in fact, the only hope 
of the country's salvation. The present indications were 
that the extremists — the Sumners and Greeleys — had 
prevailed, and that Seward had been thrown overboard. 
In which case, my father did not hesitate to say that he 
expected war within sixty days." 

His prophecy on the whole 
Was fair enough as prophesyings go; 
At fault a little in detail, but quite 
Precise enough in the main; and hereupon 
I pay due homage. 

In point of fact, and as afterwards appeared, Seward was 
not thrown over, and Lincoln had not joined the extremists ; 



7 8 Charles Francis Adams 

but we did have war In exactly fifty-three days from that 
talking. My record then goes on: "Later in the evening I 
had quite a long talk to the same effect. He [my father] told 
me that a few days before Governor Hicks, of Maryland, 
Andrew Johnson, and Cassius M. Clay had offered to an- 
swer for their States on the basis of the propositions of the 
Committee of Thirty- three; and that Mr. Rives, of the Vir- 
ginia State Senate, had told him that, upon those proposi- 
tions, they could carry every Virginia district in the spring 
election; but, in consequence of the developments of the 
last few days the whole aspect of affairs had changed, and 
Seward was at that time more depressed than he had been 
previously during the whole Winter — in fact no man In 
Washington then knew where he was standing. I walked 
home, blue enough. The very knowledge of the military 
preparations going on all about gave me In the darkness a 
feeling almost approaching fear. In my letters I had all 
winter long noted the sudden and violent transitions from 
extreme exultation to the depth of despair; but I had not 
learnt from experience. I now felt as much In doubt as If 
this had been my first experience of a panic, and asked 
myself In vain — Where Is It all to end.? The Issue seemed 
made up, and the result in the worst possible hands — those 
of the Virginia Convention. We sat In Jost's discussing the 
gloomy aspect of affairs until long after midnight; but, 
though I felt that my nerves had received a considerable 
shock, I did not notice that my night's sleep was troubled." 
I had gone on to Washington In company with Arthur 
Dexter of Boston (H. U. 1851), a grandson of Samuel Dexter, 
Secretary of War In the Cabinet of John Adams, and then 
on intimate terms with my family generally. Two days after 



IVashingtoHj 1861 79 



our arrival we went together to the Capitol, and I sent in 
my cards to Mr. Sumner and Governor Seward, not having 
seen the last since I left his house at Auburn, in the previous 
October. "Sumner came out ahnost immediately, greeting 
me most cordially, and at once invited us round to the cloak- 
room. On the way we passed a rather tall, strongly built 
man, with black hair and a swarthy complexion, who, 
Sumner said, was Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, and imme- 
diately introduced me to him. Mr. Johnson shook hands 
with me, and at once referred to the fact that he had formerly 
sat next to my grandfather in the House of Representatives, 
occupied his seat during his first illness, and seen him fall in 
his last. Mr. Johnson's manners are quite gentle, though 
slightly formal. He has a deep, black eye, and, with his 
somewhat neat black clothes and clean-shaven face, looks, 
physically and intellectually, like a strong man. While 
talking with him, I turned round and my eyes fell on Seward, 
just coming out of one of the side doors in the lobby. There 
he was, the same small, thin, sallow man, with the pale, 
wrinkled, strongly marked face — plain and imperturbable 
— the thick, guttural voice and the everlasting cigar. Yet 
it was immediately apparent that his winter's cares had told 
on him, for he looked thin and worn, and ten years older 
than when I had left him at Auburn. I went into the cloak- 
room, and sat down with Sumner; but, seeing Wilkinson, of 
Minnesota, in the Senate-chamber, I sent in for him. The 
conversation soon turned on the one topic of the day, and 
for the first time I realized that I was in Washington, and 
how intense was the excitement and how bitter the feeling. 
It was immediately apparent that all these men had been 
brooding over the questions at issue and dwelling on them 



8o Charles Francis Adams 

till their minds had lost their tone, and become morbid. 
They were in fact now the last men in the country to be 
entrusted with responsibility. The conversation was long, 
interesting and excited. Wilkinson was riding the high blood- 
and-thunder horse; but, after uttering one or two excited 
platitudes about Major Anderson and 'the traitors,' and 
looking somewhat surprised when I remarked that ' all that 
might do very well for the hustings but would n't go down 
with me,' he subsided." I ought, by the way, to say here 
that, while in the Northwest with Seward in September, I 
had seen a great deal of Wilkinson, and quite intimately; 
and had "sized him up." He was no grave or potent Senator 
to me; and he knew it well enough. But to return to my 
diary. Wilkinson subsided; but "not so Sumner. I had 
heard that he was excited, but his manner and language 
amazed me. He talked like a crazy man, orating, gesticu- 
lating, rolling out deep periods in theatrical, whispered tones, 
— repeating himself, and doing everything but reason. He 
began by remarking in a deep, low voice and with earnest 
gestures that 'the session was drawing to a close, and the 
only question of real practical statesmanship before it had 
not been touched and would not be touched — that was the 
treatment to be accorded to the seceding States — the only 
question of true statesmanship.' I suggested that this ques- 
tion was not at all a new one; that secession was but another 
name for revolution; and, accordingly, it was but the old 
question of the treatment of revolution, and nothing more! 
This Idea seemed rather to stagger him, and he passed on 
to talk of what he called ' the compromisers ' — meaning 
Seward and my father. In less than five minutes, however, 
he was back on his old topic of ' the one true question of real 



Tf^ashingtorij 1861 81 

statesmanship'; and this he kept reiterating, each time more 
excitedly until our conversation came to a close. I soon saw 
that reason was out of the question, and the only course for 
me was to hold my tongue, letting him run down. Still, I 
could not resist the temptation now and again to put a spoke 
in his wheel; but it was not possible to throw him off the 
track, he merely gave a bump and a jerk, and went on fiercer 
In his utter disregard of logic and policy. His attack was on 
Seward and 'the compromisers'; 'he had thought of this 
matter in the daytime, and lay awake over it whole nights; 
it was all clear to him; to him, his path was as clear as day,' 
and then he reverted with a jolt to 'the one question.' 
'Seward,' he went on, 'did not realize the true position of 
affairs; he had been demented all the session, and the film 
had not yet cleared from his eyes. He was demoralizing the 
North. If he had but held firmly to his position, and refused 
all parley with secessionists, all would have been well. An 
appeal should have been made to the loyal. Union-loving 
feeling of the border Slave States, and all would have been 
well.' 'Seward,' he said, 'had read to him his speech, and 
to him only of the Senate,' and he then proceeded to orate; 
with intense feeling and animated gesticulation, he described 
how he 'had pleaded with him, he had prayed him, besought 
him, implored him by his past record, his good name, his 
memory hereafter' to omit certain passages. Had he done 
so, ' assuming the pure ground of his party, the whole North 
would have rallied to him; — but now — too late! — too 
late ! ' Then he would reiterate : ' I am sure — I am certain — 
I see my way so clearly; such a glorious victory was before 
us; right was with us, God was with us — our success was 
sure did we only hold firmly to our principles.' Once I lost 



8 2 Charles Francis Adams 

my patience, and attempted to stop the conversation as not 
likely to lead to any good result; but at this he got angry, 
and said that I was discussing, not he; that I began it; and 
then he went straight on, for, evidently, he could think of 
nothing else. It was very painful. The man talked so with- 
out reason, and almost without connection; and yet he gave 
me distinctly to understand that he alone could now guide 
affairs; that Seward was a mere politician vainly trying to 
deal with great issues. I was disgusted, shocked and morti- 
fied; the more because of Dexter's presence, who entertains 
for Sumner a pet aversion. Finally Seward came out; and 
what a relief it was! Thin and pale, but calm, gentle and 
patient, he was as philosophical as ever, as pleasant and 
companionable; and I now realized his position. With a 
formidable enemy in front and such allies around — foolish, 
positive, angry — it was a general-of-division in battle, his 
reserves used up and waiting for reinforcements — praying 
for night or Bliicher. And meanwhile, Lincoln, his Bliicher, 
was perambulating the country, kissing little girls and grow- 
ing whiskers ! We talked for a few moments only, as he was 
quite busy. He said that half the men there — indicating 
the Senate-chamber — were intent on pulling the house 
down, and he was merely trying to prevent them; that he 
was very much occupied, for the women and children of the 
whole South were writing to him, and looking to him for 
protection. 

"As we walked home, we passed the artillery. It was the 
first time I had seen them. Washington is almost in a state 
of siege. Every morning and evening I hear from my room 
the bugles and drums of no less than three companies quar- 
tered almost within a stone's throw of us." 



JVashington^ 1861 83 



Such is a copy made in 1900 of my contemporaneous 
record of a very noticeable talk, and one the painful impres- 
sion created by which at the time it took place is still vivid 
in memory; for it was disillusioning. Even now I can see 
Sumner's eyes gleaming with something distinctly suggestive 
of insanity, as he rolled out his oratorical periods. He was 
plainly off his balance, nor did I ever again feel towards him 
as before. Of my record, made at the time, I forgot the 
existence. The deluge of the Civil War had swept over my 
recollection, obliterating every trace of it, until in 1900 I had 
occasion to recur to it. It then threw additional light on a 
subject I have twice had occasion to discuss — once in my 
Lije of Dana, and again in that of my father. I shall have to 
discuss it once more. In my Dana, I see, I gave to Mr. Dana 
at the time an account of this conversation almost exactly 
as I now find it in my diary. ^ Since doing so I have frequently 
tried to make out some theory which would afford a reason- 
able explanation of Sumner's attitude. What policy did he 
propose.? What course of action was it that was so clear to 
j^ij^? — that would result so immediately in a glorious vic- 
tory? It is most unfortunate that when then in Washington 
I was not a little older, and did not have a good deal more 
tact and objectiveness. Had I been so blessed, I might have 
learned and recorded — for I was industrious enough with 
my pen, recording indeed at great length — many things now 
of interest. Sumner's brain was at that time super-heated, 
his nervous system over-loaded. When he got in that condi- 
tion, and in February, 1861, he was so almost continuously, 
he seemed surcharged with rhetoric. His voice vibrated with 
a tremulous depth, he orated, he laid down the law. Had I 

» Life 0} Richard Henry Dana, ii. 252. 



84 Charles Francis Adams 



only had the sense to invite him to do so, he would have dis- 
closed the heart of his mystery. As it is I have had to piece 
together a plausible hypothesis. 

I understood the position of Wilkinson at that crisis. It 
was as simple as it was senseless. He wanted to fight "the 
traitors" then and there, regardless of conditions. That the 
machinery of government was still in the hands of the old 
regime, that we had neither army nor navy, that a precipi- 
tate act would bring on a premature crisis — none of these 
things did he take into account. He was just mad; and he 
wanted to get at the "traitors." The course he suggested 
was not sensible; but it could be understood. Not so Sumner. 
What curious hallucination did he then have in his head? 
What was he driving at when he orated and reiterated his 
"one question of true statesmanship, which had not even 
been touched"? What was that proposed mysterious treat- 
ment of the seceding States ? This question has interested me, 
because it was here that my father broke with Sumner, and 
their intimacy ceased for good. After that, I never met him 
again on the old footing. Either he had become perverted 
or I had developed. Possibly both. 

When I wrote the Lije of Dana this problem did not occur 
to me. When Sumner discoursed to me in Washington, 
Secession was in my thought simply Revolution; and, so, a 
very simple thing. It, later, became such in Sumner's mind, 
as in every one else's. But how was it with him at the earlier 
period — the intensely interesting educational period which 
immediately preceded the crisis? What did he have in mind 
when declaiming to me and Dexter that morning in the 
Senate ante-chamber? As the result of much puzzling and 
piecing together I think I afterwards reached a correct so- 



TVashinmn^ 1861 85 



lution of the psychological puzzle. That Sumner was an 
agitator, a rhetorician and a theorist — in a word, an ego- 
tistical doctrinaire — is well understood. As such he was 
devoid of hard common sense and true sagacity of insight. 
He saw every situation through his feelings, often over- 
excited, and he evolved his facts from his inner conscious- 
ness. His mind had dwelt on the issues which now presented 
themselves, waking and sleeping, until he had ceased to be 
a reasoning being; and his friends at times feared for his 
sanity.^ His mission was to denounce Seward, and, if possi- 
ble, force him from public life. He openly declared Seward 
ready to sell us out. In February, 1861, he was actually 
haunted with fear of some compromise. In point of fact the 
time for compromise was past; that any clear-sighted, well- 
informed man should have seen, and ceased to concern him- 
self with the thought of it. Sumner still regarded it as the 
one great danger. The policy he had in mind — concerning 
the results of which he felt such absolute certainty of con- 
viction—was in reality based on an hallucination and a 
complete misapprehension of the facts of the situation. 

His idea was that the Republican party should take what 
he called a lofty moral stand. Firm, absolutely unyielding, it 
should use no word of conciliation, much less make any 
suggestion of compromise. It should, on the contrary, go 
straight forward in its course; and then came in his utter 
inability to comprehend the slave-holding character and the 
situation in the South. He fully believed that "firmness," 
as he called it, was all that was necessary; in Its presence 
they would yield, like petulant, passionate children, prone 
to violence. He looked upon the whole slave-holding class as 

^ Lije of Dana, 11. 258. 



86 Charles Francis Adams 

a combination of ruffianism and bluster, whiskey-drinking 
and tobacco-chewing. In dealing with them "firmness" was 
essential; by them, any word of concession would be con- 
strued into an indication of fear or symptom of weakness, 
and do infinite mischief. When, in June, 1861, Russell, of 
the TimeSy got back to Washington from his trip through the 
Confederacy he pronounced Mr. Sumner as " ignorant of the 
whole condition of things below Mason and Dixon's line as 
he was of the politics of Timbuctoo."^ So in February — 
three months previous — he derived his confidence from the 
wholly imaginary condition of affairs, evolved from his own 
inner consciousness. As he implied in his talk with me, he 
believed fully in the existence of a strong Union sentiment — 
a really predominating sentiment — in all the border Slave 
States. That sentiment he considered was "debauched," as 
he expressed it, or, more properly, demoralized by any word 
of conciliation. Those entertaining it "besought us" not so 
to weaken them. If, on the contrary, the "slaveocracy" was 
met with absolutely unyielding firmness the people now 
cowed by it would assert themselves, and the "slaveocracy" 
would yield. But how about the seceding States — those 
below South Carolina and bordering on the Gulf.'* There was 
where his question — " the only question " — of " true states- 
manship" came in; and there was my cause of mystification. 
He never intimated to me, but his solution of that difficulty 
was "to let them go," he "would not lift a finger to retain 
them." We would be well rid of them and their slavery. 
This explanation of his theory never suggested itself to me 
at the time of our conversation, and I only became aware of 
it recently in reading Russell's Diary "^ and Yarnell's Recol- 

^ My Diary, ii. 1 21. 2 j. go. 



Washington J 1861 87 



lections,^ but it accounts for all he said in the talk I have 
narrated. His theory was that, in presence of a display of 
absolute firmness at Washington, the border States would, 
in the end, adhere to the Union, and the Gulf States, after a 
sufficient exhibition of bluster and rhodomontade, resulting 
in their secession, would come back into the Union on our 
own terms. So, let them go; there need be no war. Only be 
"firm" and it would in the near future be a complete and 
glorious triumph; only Seward's and my father's weakness 
now jeopardized it. No sillier figment ever gained footing 
in agitator's imagination; that subsequent events demon- 
strated to him. The supposed Union sentiment did not exist 
in the border Slave States; it was both the intention and in 
the power of the extreme Slave States to precipitate a conflict; 
the possession of the National Capital would, as he well 
knew, be in dispute. Such, however, was in February, 1861, 
the policy which Charles Sumner felt absolutely certain 
would afford a plain and easy way to glorious and permanent 
victory! 

As I look back on it — recalling those days of doubt and 
pain — we were all wrong; a band of men — anxious, ex- 
cited, blind or blind-folded — some passionate and vindic- 
tive; ready, ripe for blows, all groping their way to a dreaded 
result; but Sumner was the most wrong and the blindest of 
the whole throng; though by all odds the most certain In his 
own clearness of vision and knowledge of the facts. Seward 
and my father were In his belief wrong; for they fixed their 
eyes on the change of administration, and looked no further, 
confidently believing that a reaction would then set In, and 
reason reassert itself. Seward so told Russell, of the Times, 

^ Yarnell, Recollections, 8. 



8 8 Charles Francis Adams 

speaking with perfect confidence only five days before 
Sumter: " the States would come back at the rate of one a 
month." ^ The "compromisers," as Sumner called them, 
referring always to Seward and my father, but who in reality 
were Crittenden and the supporters of his East-and-West 
line project, were so very wrong as to call for no comment; 
for the Southern extremists — let alone the Northern Re- 
publicans — would not consider it, and were intent on a 
separate, slave-holding nationality, and nothing short of 
that. The day for compromise on that basis was wholly past. 
On the other hand, the Northern extremists were wrong, for 
they, after the manner of my friend, Wilkinson, wholly 
underestimated their enemy. On the whole, therefore, up to 
this point — the change of administration — Seward and 
my father were the coolest and wisest counsellors. They 
were wrong in their understanding of the ultimate and funda- 
mental facts of the situation; but their error implied no con- 
sequences. They proposed to get possession of the machinery 
of the Government; that was absolutely essential. That 
secured, they counted on a sullen but undemonstrative atti- 
tude on the part of the seceded States, and a strong and 
increasing reaction in the border States; and, if in this they 
proved mistaken, a policy of another character must then be 
shaped to meet events as they developed. In such case the 
true course could not yet be foreseen. That was the only 
statesmanship possible in the situation as it then was; and 
the event fully justified it. 

Unfortunately for Seward, following this wise policy until 
the close of April, when he then at last found his hopes van- 
ishing; when, plainly, no reaction in the border States was 

* My Diary, i. 103; il. 113. 



Washington^ 1861 89 



to be longer hoped for, and the problem of the Southern forts 
pressed for an immediate solution — could, indeed, no longer 
be deferred — then, one day, Seward lost his head. He 
found himself fairly beyond his depth; and he plunged! The 
foreign-war panacea took possession of him; and he yielded 
to it. Then, once for all, he showed himself unequal to the 
great occasion; his limitations became apparent. The fact is, 
as I now see him, Seward was an able, a specious and adroit, 
and a very versatile man; but he escaped being really great! 
He made a parade of philosophy, and by it I was very effec- 
tually deceived; but it was not the genuine article. It was, 
on the contrary, something else — stuff of a very flimsy tex- 
ture. Seward was not well grounded either in learning or in 
the facts surrounding him — did not have a strong, firm 
grasp. He was, after all, as men instinctively felt, more of a 
politician than a statesman. Perhaps my own impression 
could best be conveyed — looking back on him now through 
the perspective of forty years — by saying that he ^^as an 
adroit politician and pseudostatesman, having in him a dash 
of the philosopher. He was patient, good-tempered, tolerant, 
and a great believer in his countrymen and their institutions. 
Sumner, on the other hand, I knew better. He was a very 
considerable historical figure— the most considerable in 
Massachusetts during my time. As I have already said, a 
theorist, agitator and rhetorician, a doctrinaire with no real 
insight into men and conditions, Sumner was a tremendous 
egotist and woefully lacking in plain common sense. Strange 
to say, by no means a bad politician, he was no statesman. 
Intolerant to the last degree when any issue he had at heart 
was involved, he was as a Senator great, and, in many 
respects, ideal. He was there essentially a round peg in a 



90 Charles Francis Adams 

round hole; and he filled the hole, also, though by no means 
a small one. 

To return, however, to myself and the narrative of 1861. 
My father was more fortunate than Seward. Absolutely 
right and wise in his course up to the change of administra- 
tion, he then ceased to have any connection with the conduct 
of home affairs. When the reaction he had so confidently 
counted on failed to develop, and a new policy had to be 
devised, he was wrong in his inclination; for he failed to see 
that the time for action had at last come, and the issue must 
be met. He favored the abandonment of Sumter. His horror 
of civil war was such that I find myself at a loss to fix the 
point at which he would have made a stand. I am not at all 
sure he would not have concluded that a peaceable separation 
was best. This, however, is and was a mere abstract proposi- 
tion. A peaceable separation, involving as it did the border 
States and the National Capital, was out of the question. Had 
my father remained in public life in Washington, he would 
have found his course marked out for him in his own despite, 
as did the others. On one point, however, I am clear: he 
never would have been a victim of Seward's foreign-war delu- 
sion. No more so in Washington than he was in London. 

I left off on the 21st of February. On the 22d, a dull, 
murky day, Henry and I dined at Arlington, with the family 
of General Lee. He was not there, and I never had even a 
glance at him; though, possibly, I may have seen him one 
day shortly after, as I was riding away from Arlington after 
a morning call. If I did, he was going up the Avenue in a 
carriage, just returned from Texas; and he looked at my 
sister and myself from the window — curiously — a military, 
handsome man, with a short, grey beard. The dinner at 



Washington^ 1861 91 

Arlington was Interesting, and I remember it well. One of 
General Lee's sons ^ had been a classmate of Henry's at 
Harvard. A daughter, Miss Agnes, I thought extremely- 
attractive. We had some young officers of artillery there. 
A few months later we were all arrayed against each other; 
and I fancy there must have been fully half-a-dozen future 
generals and colonels about the Arlington table that day. 

The following evening I went to a reception at Mrs. 
Eames's, then the salon of Washington. I there met J. J. 
Crittenden and Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, both 
in Washington in attendance on the time-consuming, but 
otherwise futile. Peace Conference. "As good specimens of 
the Kentucky gentleman as one often meets; large, with 
white heads, stout, burly figures, and those elaborately 
polite but very formal manners so common with Southern 
gentlemen. I had more or less talk with both; and, I must 
say, I was more impressed by their appearance than by what 
they said. They seemed possessed with the Southern idea 
that cotton is all in all; and they actually told me that the 
South neither wished nor intended to be more prosperous 
than now, or to produce anything but cotton; 'they were, 
Sir, the most prosperous people on the face of the Globe, Sir,' 
etc., etc. And this is much the sort of stuff now talked in 
Washington by most Southern men." 

On the 25th I was in the gallery of the House. The report 
of the Committee of Thirty-three was under discussion. I 
took a deep interest in the fate of the recommendations con- 
tained in that report, being as purblind as all the rest in 
regard to the small importance of all things then under dis- 
cussion ; and those opposed to them were having recourse to 
* William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (1837-1891). 



92 Charles Francis Adams 



dilatory tactics. So I recorded that I was made "almost 
crazy by the indecision and lack of force of the old owl of a 
Speaker [Pennington]. The fate of the country seemed hang- 
ing in the balance, and the dolt had not force to drive busi- 
ness ahead. As I iidgetted in the galleries, I groaned in 
spirit: *0h! for one hour of Banks!' Finally, despairing of 
action, I turned my steps homeward. On the way I saw 
Governor Seward, and joining him, walked up the Avenue. 
He was rather more neatly dressed than usual, and seemed 
quite cheerful, as he walked along, holding his light bamboo 
cane by both hands in front of him across his legs, watching 
everything that went on in the Avenue, and talking inces- 
santly. I left him at his door, going to dine 'with some 
friends' at Willard's — of course, the President-elect." 

During this visit to Washington I made my first acquaint- 
ance with that Virginia country, with which I was destined 
shortly after to become so drearily familiar. In fact, I never 
approached such a knowledge of Massachusetts as, between 
1862 and 1864, I acquired of Virginia from the Potomac to 
the James. And now, on a cantering horse, I enjoyed greatly 
scampering over the country, noting "its miserable popu- 
lation, Its half-tilled farms and hardly passable roads; its 
deserted houses, the benighted inhabitants of the houses not 
deserted, and the wretched cultivation. I could not but 
deplore the fact that so fine a portion of our heritage was 
cursed with slavery." 

The evening of the 28th I passed with Andrew Johnson, 
whose acquaintance I had made In the Senate waiting-room 
a few days before. Johnson was then at the highest point 
of his reputation. A Southern Unionist, a "poor white " of 
Eastern Tennessee, who, by native energy, had elevated 



TVashington^ 1861 93 

himself to the Senate, he was holding his own there against 
Davis and all the representatives of Sumner's " Slaveocracy," 
who were trying in vain to dragoon him. It was not given us 
to look into the future, and see Andrew Johnson as he later 
on exhibited himself from the unfortunate altitude to which 
Booth's pistol elevated him. In February, i86i, he bore 
himself very gallantly in a most trying position. And so I 
wisely called on him, with a view to better acquaintance. " I 
found him at home in his hotel, stived up in one miserable 
room, littered with folded speeches and copies of public docu- 
ments, and otherwise containing a bed and some scanty 
chamber furniture. He received me cordially, and introduced 
me to his son, a by no means distinguished-looking specimen 
of the young Tennesseean. As we talked, he paced slowly up 
and down the room, or sat facing me, speaking slowly and 
very carefully, with force though not with much feeling. 
We first discussed a convention election which had just been 
held in North Carolina, with the result of which he was 
greatly elated, though to evince feeling one way or the other 
is evidently no part of his philosophy. The great thing about 
the man is evidently his nerve — his apparent force and cool- 
ness in a position of danger. I spoke to him of his colleague, 
Nicholson. 'I can't,' he said, 'speak with freedom of my 
colleague because of our position; but when I became con- 
vinced that this conspiracy existed, it seemed to me very 
desirable that we should act together, and I consulted him. 
But I soon found that he had been swept away in the general 
current. When I spoke to him. Sir, there was dismay depicted 
on that man's countenance.' 'But,' he went on to add, 
'though I can't speak of him personally, I will make a general 
remark, with no particular application : there are, you know. 



94 Charles Francis Adams 

some men of a nature so selfish and conceited that they can't 
take a broad, generous view of any subject; and so mean 
and cowardly that they dare not pursue it if they could.' Of 
Sumner, he said that he knew him slightly — enough to 
exchange ordinary civilities; but he seemed to him on the 
present issues to be morbid and diseased, in fact, actually 
crazy. The feeling towards him on the Democratic side of 
the Senate he described as one of rather 'contempt' than 
anything else. He talked freely of political questions, agree- 
ing with me that no remark had ever been more ingeniously 
misconstrued and misrepresented than Seward's 'irrepressi- 
ble conflict'; and he admitted that slavery was, as an insti- 
tution, opposed to the spirit of Christianity. The constitu- 
tional amendment framed by my father [and which Lincoln 
expressly approved in his inaugural of the following week] 
he said was enough for him to go home on, and sustain 
himself in Tennessee. He then went off on the secession con- 
spiracy. He declared that nearly all the Senators from the 
South were parties to it, and he was afraid that Breckenridge 
and 'Joe' Lane were both of them in it. He was most amus- 
ingly severe over the secession of Florida. 'There's that 
Yulee,' he said, 'miserable little cuss! I remember him in 
the House — the contemptible little Jew — standing there 
and begging us — yes ! begging us to let Florida in as a State. 
Well! we let her in, and took care of her, and fought her 
Indians; and now that despicable little beggar stands up in 
the Senate and talks about her rights.' Towards Jews, he 
evidently felt a strong aversion; for, after finishing with 
Yulee he began on Benjamin, exclaiming: 'There's another 
Jew — that miserable Benjamin ! He looks on a country and 
a government as he would on a suit of old clothes. He sold 



IVashingtorij 1861 95 



out the old one; and he would sell out the new if he could in 
so doing make two or three millions.' The seceded States, 
he said, must come back; the remote and northern portions 
of the States would, he declared, pass other ordinances, and 
bring them back. He denounced Wigfall, of Texas, as 'a 
damned blackguard,' who had n't a cent ; and ' that's his way I 
the strongest secessionists never owned the hair of a nigger.' 
His conclusion was that somebody would be, and ought to 
be, hanged for all this. I was with him about an hour and 
a half, and left, considerably edified by Andrew Johnson." 
On Sunday, March 3d, the day preceding Lincoln's inaugu- 
ration, I called on the Sewards in the afternoon. "I found 
them at dinner; but Governor Seward's son chanced to be in 
the hall, and he urged me so strongly that I went in and 
joined them at the dinner-table. There I found, much to my 
gratification. General King, of Milwaukee [one of my travel- 
ling companions during the trip of the previous summer], and 
also General James Watson Webb, of the New York Courier 
and Enquirer, besides some Auburn friends of Governor 
Seward's. He was comparatively quiet, and seemed less ex- 
uberant in spirit than usual; but almost the only thing he 
did say caused with me a long breath of relief. Referring to 
the coming inaugural, he remarked that he had been reading 
it, and that while it would satisfy the whole country, it more 
than covered all his [Seward's] heresies." 

Seward at the same time made another remark which, 
though I failed to note it down at the time, made an impres- 
sion on me, and I have since often repeated it, and noticeably 
in some remarks I made at the meeting of the Historical 
Society in 1909, on the observance of Lincoln's Centennial.^ 

1 Proceedings, xlii. 145-54- 



96 Charles Francis Adams 



I there put on file my recollections of that mid-day Wash- 
ington Sunday dinner of 1861. Seward then said, referring 
to Lincoln and his intercourse with him: "The President has 
a curious vein of sentiment running through his thought, 
which is his most valuable mental attribute." Long subse- 
quent events gave a noticeable significance to those words, 
and caused me to bear them freshly in recollection. They 
showed, in my opinion, not only considerable insight, but a 
most creditable spirit of appreciation on Seward's part. Few 
men in public life, then or now, would have noticed the 
attribute at all ; and the few who did would, most of them, 
have taken it as an element of weakness. It was one of not a 
few casual remarks of Seward in those days which have 
caused me to realize that, with all his "outs," he was after 
all a man of finer fibre than the rest. 

Lincoln's inauguration (Monday) came with a sudden 
change of weather. The sun shone brightly, but a strong 
wind carried on it clouds of that Washington dust, which, 
then much more than now — for the streets were not yet 
asphalted — was wont to render walking detestable on days 
of early March. I wrote two accounts of what took place; 
one in my diary, which, however, was rather short, as I also 
wrote for publication a long descriptive letter, printed a few 
days later in the Boston Transcript} It was dated March 
4th. From the Senate gallery I saw Lincoln walk in, ann in 
arm with Buchanan, and the two seated themselves in front 
of the desk of the Vice-President. And, "in spite of the wry 
neck and dubious eye, the outgoing President was," to my 
mind, "undeniably the more presentable man of the two; 
his tall, large figure, and white head, looked well beside Mr. 

* March 7, over the signature of "Conciliator." 



TVashington^ 1861 97 



Lincoln's lank, angular fomi and hirsute face; and the dress 
of the President-elect did not indicate that knowledge of the 
proprieties of the place which was desirable." Then followed 
the inaugural, delivered from "the miserable scaffold" on 
the east front before "a vast sea, not exactly of upturned 
human faces, but of hats and shirt-bosoms of all descrip- 
tions." Of the inaugural, I did not hear one word; for I was 
standing on a projection of the unfinished Senate wing of the 
Capitol, watching the scene, and was thus too far removed. 
But "Air. Lincoln's delivery struck me as good; for it was 
quiet, with but little gesture and small pretence of oratory; 
the audience did not strike me as very enthusiastic — not 
such as they tell us hailed Jackson when he stood on the same 
steps on the occasion of the first Invasion of Washington by 
the hordes of the youthful West — but it was silent, atten- 
tive, appreciative, and wonderfully respectable and orderly. 
At length a louder and more prolonged cheer announced that 
the inaugural was delivered. The Chief Justice administered 
the oath of office, and the long, eager, anxious struggle was 
over. A Republican President was safely Inaugurated. 

"Not until the ceremony was over did the curious cease 
to speculate as to the probabilities of 'a bead being drawn 
on Mr. Lincoln,' and the chances of assassination; and the 
question was curiously discussed whether the whole South 
would not yet furnish one Ravaillac." Now the procession 
was re-formed, and the new President was escorted to the 
White House. I started for home. As I walked up by way of 
F Street and the Patent Office, parallel with Pennsylvania 
Avenue, the procession's route, I chanced to meet Mr. 
Sumner, and joined him. "He seemed satisfied with the 
inaugural, and remarked of it: 'I do not suppose Lincoln had 



9 8 Charles Francis Adams 

it in his mind, if indeed he ever heard of it; but the inaugural 
seems to me best described by Napoleon's simile of "a hand 
of iron and a velvet glove.'" At home, on the other hand, 
I found my father in high glee over the endorsement that 
same inaugural gave himi, and he was declaring the party 
saved. I also met Winter Davis, who pronounced him.self as 
ready to stand on the President's position." Thus, that day, 
every one was, as Seward predicted they would be, "satisfied." 
Returning to my walk home with Mr. Sumner; "all day 
I had looked in vain for the tall, commanding figure of 
General Scott; he was not in the procession; he was not in 
the Senate. As I left the Capitol" and was walking home- 
ward in company with Mr. Sumner, I came, at one of the 
intersecting avenues where a view was obtained in several 
directions, "upon a small carriage, drawn by a single horse 
and surrounded by mounted staff officers and orderlies, the 
whole the centre of a crowd of idlers. It was Scott's carriage, 
and in it sat the old General himself, in full uniform, anxiously 
observing the procession as it passed in the street beyond, 
and holding himself ready for any emergency. What was 
now dreaded was, of course, assassination followed by riot 
and panic, and an immediate necessity for a display of force; 
the fear of a coup de main was passed." Mr. Sumner stopped, 
and exchanged greetings with Scott through the open win- 
dow of his carriage. The old General shook hands with us, 
and seemed in high spirits and greatly relieved, as he watched 
intently the perfectly quiet progress of events below, on 
Pennsylvania Avenue. In his staff were several officers 
destined soon to have high rank and participate In great 
movements ; they also were now in high spirits — satisfied 
with themselves, and feeling that the situation was well in 



JVashingtoHj 1861 99 

hand. We walked in a street converging with the movement 
of the procession, which, at length, "enveloped in its cloud 
of dust, reached the White House, and I drew a long breath 
when I saw Mr. Lincoln leave his carriage; and turned away 
confident that the last danger was passed." 

We all, the hope being father of the thought, had then 
nursed ourselves into a feverish faith, and anxious rather 
than real belief that, with a peaceful inauguration, the crisis 
would be really in safety "passed," and I closed this letter 
of mine in that spirit. "From this time," I wrote, "the 
secession experiment, I believe, will die away, and the Union 
feeling rise almost visibly, day by day, unless again the seces- 
sion feeling is revived by some sort of strange folly on the 
part of the Administration. Within the last few days I have 
conversed with many men from the South, including even 
South Carolina, and all announce a better, kinder state of 
feeling, needing only gentleness and conciliation to ripen into 
Union." The one fact to which we then pinned our faith in 
an ultimate peaceful solution was in the avoidance as yet of 
any act of overt violence resulting in the shedding of blood. 
Until this should actually occur we nourished a hope, amount- 
ing almost to a faith, that, somehow or other, it was fated 
not to occur. Yet all the time we were conscious that we 
were drifting with neither guidance nor control. It was a 
period of anxious suspense; a fading reliance on " something." 

A few days later, I attended the new President's first 
evening levee. "A pretty business it was. Such a crush was, 
I imagine, never seen in the White House before, on a similar, 
or any other, occasion. After two vain attempts to get into 
the reception room. Dexter and I resolutely set ourselves in 
the main current, and were pushed and squeezed along. It 



loo Charles Francis Adams 

was a motley crowd. There they were — the sovereigns; 
some in evening dress, others in morning suits ; with gloves 
and without gloves; clean and dirty; all pressing in the same 
direction, and all behaving with perfect propriety. There 
was no ill temper; no \Tilgarityor noise; no rudeness; in spite 
of the crowd and discomfort, everything was respectful and 
decorous. The sight was one not pleasant to see, and even 
less pleasant to participate in; but still good of its kind. 
Here, as everywhere, the people governed themselves. At 
last, after the breath was nearly out of our bodies. Dexter 
and I came in sight of the President — the tall, rapidly 
bobbing head of the good 'Abe,' as he shook hands with his 
guests, and quickly passed them along. The vastly greater 
number he hurried by him; but, when any one he knew came 
along, he bent himself down to the necessary level, and 
seemed to whisper a few words in the ear, in pleasant, homely 
fashion; though not exactly in one becoming our President. 
I hurried by as quickly as I could, and retreated into the 
rear of the room, there to observe. I stayed about an hour 
and a half, meeting Mr. Sumner, Mr. and Mrs. S. A. Douglas 
and others, and subsequently, leaving by the south front, 
reached home with 'tir'd eye-lids upon tir'd eyes.' " 

The following Sunday it accidentally fell in my way to do 
an excellent turn to Dr. John G. Palfrey, than whom I may 
now say I have never in my life known a more truly esti- 
mable character. I do not think it is possible for a man to 
live more consistently up to conscientious ideals than Dr. 
Palfrey did through his whole life. He was almost morbidly 
victim to the terrible New England conscience. No man had 
sacrificed more than he in his advocacy of the anti-slavery 
cause; but wholly unimaginative, he was not sympathetic in 



TVashington^ 1861 



lOI 



the human way and altogether the reverse of magnetic. 
Kindly, he was of conscience all compact. Very sensitive, he 
was in no way self-assertive; and the popular movement had 
passed him by. In the day of triumph, he seemed likely to go 
unrewarded; buried there at Cambridge, immersed in his 
histor}^ of New England, but needy and craving recognition. 
I had talked with both Sumner and my father about him, 
and had written home to ascertain what sort of an appoint- 
ment would be agreeable to him. As yet, we had been unable 
to fix on anything. Sunday, the loth, I called to see Mr. 
Sumner at his lodgings — a sitting- and bed-room on F Street, 
I think. Presently, after some office-seekers had betaken 
themselves away, we began to discuss Dr. Palfrey's case. He 
alluded to a letter he had received from him [Palfrey] on the 
subject, in which he had spoken of what he would like, but 
nothing definite seemed to come out of It all; and then "he 
[Sumner] suddenly turned to me, saying: 'By the way, I have 
drawn an elephant, and don't know what to do with It. 
Yesterday I was at the Post-Ofiice Department, and Mr. 
Blair [the Postmaster-General] informed me that the Boston 
Post-Ofiice belonged to me, as a Senator living In that city; 
and I'm sure I don't know what to do with it.' It seemed 
that the postmastership In the place of his residence was a 
bit of patronage conceded as a perquisite to a Senator, 
though Mr. Sumner was not even aware of the fact, having 
always been In opposition. I at once hesitatingly suggested 
Dr. Palfrey for the appointment; and, finding It not unfavor- 
ably received, pressed the Idea hard upon him. Feeling that 
I had made an impression, I got him to promise to dine with 
us." This was a happy stroke on my part; for it had been 
Sumner's habit to take his Sunday dinner in a perfectly 



I o 2 Charles Francis Adams 

informal way at my father's. He came uninvited, but with 
absolute regularity, and was always very welcome. When, 
however, my father had, during the winter, shown indica- 
tions of a conciliatory bearing towards the South, Sumner 
had discontinued his Sunday dinner practice. So doing was 
intensely characteristic. A difference of opinion even on a 
question of policy in a man's manners and bearing in the 
conduct of the issue on slavery, he then classed with moral 
delinquencies. His friendship and family Intimacy my 
father and mother then valued highly, their personal regard 
was almost traditional; and seeing him in a kindly mood, I 
now struck in as a conciliator. I knew, also, that my advo- 
cacy of Dr. Palfrey would be potently seconded by my father. 
So I hurried home, and apprised my father of the state of the 
case. Presently Sumner came, and that was the last time he 
ever sat at my father's table — he who, for over a dozen 
years, had been the guest most constant at it. It was, and 
to my mind, still is a great pity; and there was no sufficient 
reason for a break. However, Intent on Palfrey's case, that 
day I got Mr. Sumner there once more, and, as it proved, for 
the last time. "He was in great feather. Such a wonderful 
change I never saw in mortal man. The excitement and other 
peculiarities, which had so disgusted me in our previous inter- 
views during this visit to Washington, had disappeared. 
They had vanished wholly under the soothing influence of 
success, and beneath the calm dignity of the chairmanship of 
the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He now aired his 
new importance; and, in place of his former fierceness, he 
roared as gently as a sucking dove. The pleasant way in 
which he looked upon propositions, which, only the week 
before, were * compromises ' with Hell, was, indeed, beautiful 



JVashington^ 1861 103 



to behold. Today he was great! He talked of Seward and 
the diplomatic corps; and told us all the secrets of the Cabi- 
net, so far as he knew them; how Mrs. Lincoln wanted to 
make a Collector of the Port of Boston, on account of her son 
*Bobby,' and had made a naval officer; how disgusted the 
diplomatic corps was at the possible nomination of Schurz 
to Turin; how Lincoln and Seward had a conversation about 
Schurz, in which Seward convinced Lincoln that Schurz 
ought not to be sent, and Lincoln sent him to Seward, for 
them to fight the matter out together; how the Western 
barbarians had invaded the White House, and Mr. Lincoln 
was meddling with every office in the gift of the Executive. 
Finally, he began on Palfrey, so I took myself off, leaving 
him in my father's hands." 

That evening I went to the reception at Mrs. Eames's. 
"If the President caught it at dinner, his wife caught it at 
the reception. All manner of stories about her were flying 
around; she wanted to do the right thing, but, not knowing 
how, was too weak and proud to ask; she was going to put the 
White House on an economical basis, and, to that end, was 
about to dismiss 'the help,' as she called the servants; some 
of whom, it was asserted, had already left because ' they must 
live with gentlefolks'; she had got hold of newspaper report- 
ers and railroad conductors, as the best persons to go to for 
advice and direction. Numberless stories of this sort were 
current; and, while Mrs. Lincoln was in a stew, it was obvi- 
ous that her friends, the Illinoisans, were in a rumpus. Much 
fun is brewing in Washington." It was now the dead season 
in Washington, or rather, that year, the season of lull before 
the fierce bursting of the storm. Congress had dispersed; 
and expectancy was in the air, with greedy office-seekers 



1 04 Charles Francis Adams 

thronging streets and corridors. And such streets and such 
corridors ! The unheroic was much in evidence. 

We all left Washington on the 13th. Two evenings before 
Seward dined with us. He was now Secretary of State, and 
just two weeks later Russell, of the Times, reached Wash- 
ington and had those conversations with him of which he 
has in his My Diary given such a vivid, picturesque resume. 
By the loth of the month the Cabinet complications, which 
reached a climax three weeks later, had begun to develop. 
The question of mastery was yet to be settled. The President 
was an absolutely unknown quantity; so much so that a 
little later, as subsequently appeared, Seward invited him 
practically to abdicate, delegating full authority to himself. 
We, of my father's house, were all ardent Sewardites. We 
thought that in him, and the pursuance of the policy he 
either had devised, or at the proper time would devise, lay 
the single chance of peace and the preser\^atIon of the Union. 
As I now see It, his usefulness was, however, in fact then over. 
He had been of great service, during the interim period, hold- 
ing things together and tiding over dangerous shoals. This 
he had done; but he had done it under an entire misapprehen- 
sion of the real facts of the situation and with an absolutely 
impossible result in view. As I have said, he believed In the 
existence of a strong underlying Union sentiment in the 
South ; he looked forward with confidence to a sharp reaction 
of sentiment there, as soon as the people of those States 
realized that no harm was intended them; and he nourished 
the delusive belief that a recourse to force could be avoided; 
that, If it was avoided or postponed, the secession movement 
would languish, and gradually die out. Thus he was now 
exerting all his influence, greater by far than that of any 



JVashington^ 1861 105 



other one man, In a wrong direction. The possession of the 
Government having been secured, the true policy to be pur- 
sued, it is now obvious, was to let events take their course, 
inducing or compelling the seceded States to put themselves 
in the wrong by assuming the initiative, striking the first 
blow. A statesman equal to the occasion and grasping the 
situation in Its full scope, would undoubtedly have pursued 
this course. Gathering his resources, he would have bided his 
time, perhaps covertly provoking the blow. But Seward was 
no Bismarck, and this was just the course Seward did not 
wish to have pursued. 

That evening, the nth, he talked freely, and the next day 
I incorporated the substance of all he said In a letter printed 
shortly after in the Boston Transcript} It Is before me now, 
pasted in my Scrap-book, and is supplemented by passages 
in my diary. Talking in his off-hand way, Seward then 
expressed to us, as four weeks later he did to Mr. Russell,^ 
"the fullest confidence that things were coming out right; 
but he at the same time admitted that, three months before, 
it was in no way Impossible that Jefferson Davis might, at 
the time he was speaking to us, have been in possession of 
Washington. 'Ever since Congress met,' he said, Sve have 
been on a lee shore. The sails have been flapping, and more 
than once we have thugged on the bottom; but we have been 
making offing all the time, and are now getting safely off shore 
and into deep water.' " As Russell the moment he got into 
the Confederacy afterwards became satisfied, Seward knew 
nothing of the real state of feeling in the South.^ He derived 
what little knowledge he had from local and unreliable, or 
misinformed, sources. So, this evening, he did not hesitate 

» March 15. 2 My Diary, i. 88, 103. « lb., i. 168. 



io6 Charles Francis Adams 

to assert that "the fever of secession" was "fast disappear- 
ing, before the strong reaction for Union. The poHtical 
traitors of that region," he said — "the Hunters, Masons, 
Wises, CHngmans and Garnetts — are trembling for their 
Hves, and their only chance, and they know it, of retaining 
their power, lies in the revival of the excitement." The 
abandonment of Fort Sumter, he argued, would therefore 
not be taken by the South as a sign of weakness, but, on the 
contrary, would give "a new and tremendous emphasis to 
the now rapidly reviving Union spirit. The true men of 
Virginia will, at the close of the coming April, sweep every 
representative, even suspected of treason, from the National 
Congress, and forewarn the chuckle-headed Mason and 
sophistical Hunter of their impending fate; and Virginia 
would but set an example to other States. To hold Fort 
Sumter longer" was, therefore, "to stop the mouth and palsy 
the arm of every Union man, and there are many of them, 
throughout the seceded States, for no important end." The 
abandonment of Sumter he considered, therefore, "a mere 
question of time. It might be done then, and made the basis 
of a claim of gratitude by the Administration; or it might be 
done thirty days hence as a matter of necessity, and no credit 
gained. If we set out to reinforce it, we must join battle 
at our weakest point, and the enemy's strongest; our loss 
might be heavy, while our gain could not be great." Hence, 
I argued in the Transcript, the abandormient was decided 
upon, and might be looked for any day. Thus at this stage 
of the development of affairs — with a crisis immediately 
impending — Seward was pursuing an impossible result in 
pursuance of a policy devised under an entire misapprehen- 
sion of facts. Meanwhile, to abandon the Tortugas or Fort 



Washington^ 1861 107 



Pickens was no part of Mr. Seward's plan. Those could be 
held and defended; what he had in mind was to avoid a 
collision at a point where we could not hope to escape defeat. 
Accompanied by his family, my father left Washington, 
and returned home, all of us nourishing this delusive hope 
of peace and a restored Union. Once in Boston, we heard 
nothing. On the 19th came the telegraphic announcement 
of my father's nomination to the English Mission. "It fell 
on our breakfast-table like a veritable bomb-shell, scattering 
confusion and dismay. It had been much discussed in 
Washington, but Seward had encountered so much difficulty, 
and the President had seemed so intent on the nomination of 
Dayton, that the news finally came on us like a thunderbolt. 
My mother at once fell into tears and deep agitation; fore- 
seeing all sorts of evil consequences, and absolutely refusing 
to be comforted; while my father looked dismayed. The 
younger members of the household were astonished and con- 
founded." Such was my diary record. It is droll to look back 
on; very characteristic and Bostonese. My father and mother 
had lived there steadily for nearly thirty years. They had 
grown into a rut, and begun to entertain a species of religious 
cult on that head. My mother, in some respects remarkably 
calculated for social life, took a constitutional and sincere 
pleasure in the forecast of evil. She delighted in the dark 
side of anticipation; she did not really think so; but liked to 
think, and say, she thought so. She indulged in the luxury of 
woe! So now, I remember well how she nursed herself into 
a passing belief that somehow she was very much to be com- 
passioned, and something not far removed from disgrace had 
fallen upon us and upon her; and when she went out people 
would look at her, and say, "Poor woman," etc., etc. It 



I o 8 Charles Francis Adams 

seemed to give her quite a new view of the matter, when pres- 
ently every one she met, instead of avoiding a painful subject 
or commiserating her, offered her congratulations or expres- 
sions of envy. So she cheered up amazingly. As to my father, 
he had then lived so long in the atmosphere of Boston, that 
I really think the great opportunity of his life when suddenly 
thrust upon him caused a sincere feeling of consternation. 
He really felt that he was being called on to make a great 
personal and political sacrifice. 

As for me, I now went back to my office. Presently my 
father was summoned on to Washington to confer with the 
Secretary. He was there during the closing days of March, 
getting home on the ist of April. I well remember his re- 
turn. It then lacked only four days of a full month since the 
inauguration of Lincoln, and there were no visible signs of 
that reaction in the sentiment of the South which Seward 
had looked for with such confidence. On the contrary, 
though the new Administration did not threaten to resort 
to coercion, the Confederacy seemed to be fast consolidat- 
ing. Nor in the border States did the aspect of afi"airs im- 
prove; on the contrary, it day by day grew unmistakably 
menacing. My diary read as follows: "My father, summ.oned 
by Seward to Washington a week ago, got home last night. 
For several days, now, I have been conscious of a vague pre- 
sentiment that things were not going well. Instead of right- 
ing itself and coming up into the wind as soon as it was free 
of the incubus of a Democratic Administration — as I all 
along had so confidently hoped and predicted — the ship 
seemed, on the contrary, to be steadily and helplessly drifting 
upon the rocks, Secession and Reconstruction. So strongly 
had this feeling got a hold on me, that, when my father came 



Washington y i86i 109 



into the breakfast-room, I feared to ask him any question on 
the subject. I did at last; and, at first, he seemed to deny 
that any change for the worse was apparent. Yet a few more 
inquiries were enough. It was at once apparent that my 
apprehensions were not only well founded, but that the real 
truth was worse than I supposed. We are drifting; and drift- 
ing fearfully. Our last card has proved a low one; the card 
on which we relied for everything. It is not the ace of trumps, 
but only the deuce; if, indeed, it be a trump card at all." 

Whether my father then still clung to the hope of a peace- 
able solution of the troubles, I cannot say. On that point 
I never satisfied myself. In immediate presence of the inevit- 
able, I think we were all, and he especially. In a state ap- 
proaching m.ental bewildennent; we would not acknowledge 
that of which we could not help being inwardly conscious. 
We were, in fact, exactly in the position of people, passengers 
and landsmen, on some battered hulk drifting slowly but 
surely on the reefs that outlined a menacing lee shore. The 
ship had not yet struck, but we waited breathlessly to hear 
and feel her strike. Seward had in Washington evidently still 
talked to my father in the old, optimistic, hopeful vein; just 
as, a week later, he still talked in it to Russell. That, how- 
ever, would not longer pass current; and for myself, I can 
only say that, from the moment I saw my father after he got 
back, I ceased to hope. War, I felt, confronted us. As I 
wrote, it was a bitter day — "without, a furious snow-stomi 
raging; within, for me at least, doubt, hesitation and gloom." 
The only consolation I had was in the nomination of Dr. 
Palfrey as Postmaster of Boston; a result I had been instru- 
mental in bringing about, "a long deferred act of political 
justice," for which Dr. Palfrey, by a note written immedi- 



I lO 



Charles Francis Adams 



ately after receiving the news of his appointment, signified 
his sense of obligation to me individually. Three days later 
I wrote: "Fast day! and never did this country stand in 
greater need of aid from above than now. Still drifting — 
drifting — drifting! Our case resembles nothing so much as 
that of a ship, w^hich, close on a lee shore, has only just 
weathered a violent storm. Morning has broken, not fresh 
and bright, but murky and sullen. The wind has died away, 
but a strong under-tow is bearing us imperceptibly nearer 
and nearer those rocks over which tremendous seas are 
dashing. Unless God helps us, we shall in a few moments be 
in the breakers." Then follow the usual weak observations 
and objurgations over the absence of a guiding hand at the 
helm, useless to repeat now, though natural enough then. 
Ten days afterwards, on the 14th, I wrote: "The war has 
begun! Fort Sumter is taken! Two bad announcements 
together. Yet strangely enough no drop of blood has yet 
been shed; or rather no life has been lost. Still, the first gun 
in civil war is fired, and its echoes will reverberate through 
years." 

I continued to keep a sort of intermittent diary — making 
entries sometimes every day, but more usually once a week 
or so — for the next year and a half, the last record being 
written on the transport steamer which brought my regi- 
ment up from Hilton Head to Fortress Monroe, at the time 
of Pope's ignominious Virginia campaign, in August, 1862. 
This portion of my diary had, however, little, if any, value. 
I find I rarely recorded what I saw, or noted conversations; 
and, living in a provincial city, I had no special sources of 
information, nor did I often meet persons of any particular 
note. It was the dreary, commonplace existence of a young 



W^ashingtoHj 1861 



III 



man, wasting his time in a professional life for which he, 
correctly enough, believed himself most illy adapted, in an 
out-of-the-way region but during a curiously exciting but 
most critical crisis in public affairs. Thus my diary naturally 
became almost wholly introspective; my worse than useless 
introspections being diversified by lengthy lucubrations over 
the varying aspects of the situation. 

I did find in my diary before destroying it a few passages 
worth transcribing, having reference to incidents which 
occurred during those memorable eight mionths, April to 
December, 1861. It was on the 13th of April that the Con- 
federate whip came down across the Northern face; and my 
father sailed for Europe on the ist of May. Nominated on 
the 1 8th of March and at once confirmed, he did not reach 
his London post until the 13 th of May — exactly eight weeks, 
or fifty-six days, later. Such a delay, at such a crisis, seems 
inexplicable, as it was, In fact, inexcusable. Considering the 
extremely critical state of affairs and the possible conse- 
quences delay might entail, the newly appointed minister 
should have left on the steamer first following his appoint- 
ment, his instructions, If necessary, follo^vving him. He should 
have been in London at least a month earlier than my 
father got there. As it was, the Southern Commissioners 
were on the ground first, and scored the apparently great 
success of a recognition of belligerency before he arrived. 
For reasons I have set forth In my Lije of Charles Francis 
Adams, this turned out in the sequel of events a most fortu- 
nate occurrence;^ that it did so turn out was, however, a bit 
of good luck saving the country from the consequence of 
a piece of unpardonable laches. There is a secret history 

' Life, 173- 



112 



Charles Francis Adams 



attached to the incident, and I, then and later, came into 
possession of it. 

One day, I think it was during the third year of the Civil 
War, when I chanced to be in Washington, Seward, then 
Secretary of State, remarked to me in his off-hand but conse- 
quential way: "The greatest misfortune that ever happened 
to the United States was that the marriage of your brother 
occurred on the 29th of April, 1861." We had been talking 
of the rebel rams, and the attitude of Great Britain towards 
this country, then very uncertain and menacing. I knew 
what he meant. At the time my father was appointed to the 
English Amission — a month before Sumter — my brother 
John was about to be married. The date was fixed for April 
29th. My father wanted to be present; and, when, immedi- 
ately after his confirmation, he went on to Washington, he 
intimated that he would defer his sailing until the ist of 
May, if no exigency was thought to exist requiring an earlier 
departure. Seward assented, whether reluctantly or against 
his better judgment, I do not know; but at that time he was 
still dwelling in his "Southern Unionist" dream-land, and 
apparently had no realizing sense of the extremely critical 
state of aifairs, In Europe as well as at home. He quite a 
time afterwards prepared in a leisurely way the memorable 
Instructions which he characteristically read to Russell, of 
the Times, on the evening of April 8th. ^ The crisis of Sumter 
came on five days after that reading, and then followed the 
brief isolation of Washington. Those Instructions, thus com- 
municated in advance to the correspondent of a London 
newspaper, did not accordingly reach my father until April 
27th, and he sailed four days afterwards. Every stage of our 

* My Diary, i. I02. 



JVashington^ 1861 1 1 3 

action was thus marked by extreme deliberation; and the 
Confederate Commissioners took full advantage of the fact. 
There can, I think, be no question that my brother John's 
marriage on the 29th of April, 1 861, led to grave interna- 
tional complications. It is creditable to neither Seward nor 
my father that the latter was allowed to dawdle away weeks 
of precious time because of such a trifle. It was much as if a 
general had permitted some social engagement to keep him 
away from his headquarters on the eve of a great battle; and, 
in his absence, the enemy secured possession of some coigne 
of great vantage. The course of subsequent events, as I have 
elsewhere pointed out,^ transformed this apparent mishap 
into a fortunate occurrence. 

^ Lije of Charles Francis Adams, 173; see also the paper on "The British 
Proclamation of May, 1861," in Mass. Hist, Soc. Proceedings, xlviii. 190. 



IV 

WAR AND ARMY LIFE 

At that time I had already entered into a sort of military- 
life. A member of the Fourth Battalion of Massachusetts 
Volunteer Militia I was in garrison at Fort Independence, in 
Boston Harbor, and a most useful and instructive elementary- 
military school that experience proved. Elementary in the 
extreme, it was all the preliminary training I ever had. But on 
that head I shall have more to say presently — confessions, 
I might call them, to record. Sumter was fired on upon a 
Friday; but the lines of communication were broken, and 
"all day Sunday it was curious to notice the agitation of the 
people; there was but one subject of thought or of conversa- 
tion. Vague and distressing rumors were flying freely about. 
Next morning the head-lines of the daily papers told us that 
it was war." The call for troops — the first of many such — 
went forth that day; and, my diary fairly admitted, was the 
occasion to me of a very uneasy night. Seven months later, 
I received my long wished-for commission, and started off 
with my regiment, with positive elation. I had in the interim 
been educated up to the full fighting figure; but, in April, 
it was like an alarm-bell at midnight. It was with a shock 
I realized the situation. "War," I wrote that day, "is no 
plaything, and, God knows, I have no wish to trifle with it. 
I, therefore, shall not now volunteer, or expose myself to 
unnecessary service. But I can, and will, obey orders at any 
sacrifice, and, if called upon, shall go into active service. 
Not to do so, would be to incur lasting disgrace, in compari- 



War and Army Life 1 1 5 



son with which the hardship and boredom and danger of a 
campaign would be a festive pastime. If I must do it — and 
I hope I must n't — I may as well put a good face on it. The 
back is ever strengthened to the burden. To-day, I shrink 
from the idea of a skimiish. Three weeks hence, I doubt not, 
my mind will be trained up to fierce battle, if need be." I at 
least then understood myself to that extent! 

The same day the regiments began to come in from the 
countr>^ turning out full ranks. I should think much better 
of myself now, if that day I had turned the key in my office- 
door and gone off in the ranks of the Quincy company. But 
so doing never even occurred to me. I simply was n't equal 
to the occasion — my ordinary experience in life — before, 
then and since. As it was, I wrote of the regiments that day 
pouring into Boston: "They say there were strange scenes 
at the country railroad stations — more weeping than is 
usual. In Boston here there would have been a tremendous 
demonstration, but for the weather; it was sufficiently strik- 
ing even as it was. It has been a dreary, dismal day, storm- 
ing heavily from the eastward; a day with rain enough to 
extinguish any degree of enthusiasm; and, as the poor devils 
plashed through the streets, less than half drilled and most 
insufficiently clad — for few country companies are supplied 
with overcoats — they were greeted with well-deserved 
applause. But I could n't help feeling badly for them." A 
few days later I wrote: "These be indeed stirring times, and 
the age has in it, after all, the elements of the heroic. It is 
now three days that our streets have been crowded with 
soldiers and draped in flags; while our populace, usually so 
staid and quiet, is crazy with patriotism. The contagion is, 
in fact, hard to resist; and often, within these three days as 



1 1 6 Charles Francis Adams 

I have seen these men go by, half armed and a quarter uni- 
formed, many of them mere recruits, unarmed and with no 
pretence of a uniform, following, carpet-bag in hand, the 
rear of the column, I have felt a rising in the throat and been 
conscious of a moisture in the eye, which caused me to feel 
little of the soldier." Some days later there came along one 
of those storms of alarmist rumors that then from time to 
time developed, and one evening it was reported at one of 
our leisure haunts that every available man was called for, 
to be off next morning. " If this was true, it meant fight; and 
we received it accordingly. Half of our battalion were new 
recruits who had never handled a musket, all our officers 
were inexperienced, nor was there a single uniform amongst 
us; and yet we were to be ordered into immediate active 
service. The men showed their pluck. Among them, there 
was an outer gaiety and flow of humor; but it only covered 
gravity and dismay. There was n't anywhere the faintest 
sign of funk. For myself, though I kept up my spirits as well 
as the best, I certainly realized how unprepared I was to go, 
and what a doubtful experiment I thought it. As John and I 
a little later walked up Beacon Street on our way home, the 
sensation was certainly new. How many times we had trod 
the same pavements before — ^ grave and gay, drunk and 
sober, from weddings and to funerals — but never until now 
on the eve of battle." 

At last, on the 24th of April, our battalion was ordered to 
do garrison duty at Fort Independence, and so, closing my 
office, I with the rest reported at the armory. We went down, 
and took possession of the fort that afternoon, remaining 
there five weeks. A pleas anter or more useful five weeks in 
the educational way, I do not think I ever passed than those 



TVar and Army Life 



117 



during which I played soldier at Fort Independence in April 
and May, 1861. I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and 
what I there learned — the details of drill and of guard duty 
— proved aftenvards of the greatest value to me. But it was 
only a military kindergarten. The first night down I was in 
the guard detail. The guard-room — long unused and very 
damp — was awful; but my description of my beat was not 
bad, and covered many later experiences. My subsequent 
brother officer and life-long friend, Harry Russell, and I that 
night lay waking side-by-side. "The sky was at first over- 
cast; but the clouds scattered after the rising of the moon, 
and, as the wind had fallen, I found my first tour of duty on 
the ramparts far from unpleasant. The surroundings w^ere 
picturesque: on one side, beyond the parapet, the bay was 
gently rippling in the moonlight, which flooded the islands 
and shipping at anchor in the roadstead; while on the other 
were the walls around the parade-ground of the fort, white 
in the beams. In front of the guard-room a little knot of the 
relief were smoking and chatting, and, now and again, a cold 
gleam of light was reflected from the bayonet of the sentry 
patrolling the opposite rampart. As I walked my beat, stop- 
ping occasionally to admire the scene, I pondered the ques- 
tion of active service and reached my own conclusions con- 
cerning it in my particular case; and, finally, it struck me 
that I had never known two hours pass more rapidly than 
did those my two first on guard. Later, I saw the sun rise, 
and at six I was relieved." 

John was married on the evening of the 29th of April, at 
Mrs. Crowninshield's house in Longwood, and my father, 
with the remainder of the family, sailed on the ist of May. 
That afternoon I went back to Fort Independence, for which 



1 1 8 Charles Francis Adams 

I already felt homesick; and there, without once even desir- 
ing to go to the City, I remained for the next three weeks. 
The hint was a most forcible one, and I now wonder that I 
did not take it. I then actually loathed my office, and felt no 
call to my profession. My new life charmed me. I was young, 
strong, loved existence in the open air, was not afraid of 
hardship, alone of the whole garrison did I take my daily 
plunges from the wharf, and I had in me the elements of a 
thoroughly good soldier in the ranks. And yet I lacked the 
spirit of adventure, and the daring to throw myself into the 
new life. No young fellow there would have enjoyed it more. 

We were relieved, and came up to town on the last day of 
May. After we had been dismissed at the armory, I went 
home to the house in Mt. Vernon Street to don my citizens' 
clothes, and, before going out to Quincy where the newly 
married John then was, I dropped in at the Parker House, 
on School Street, to join some friends. At their request, "I 
looked at myself in the mirror, and was amazed. I had in 
every respect the aspect of a prize-fighter. My face was 
brown and tanned, my hair was cut close to my head, my 
loose coat and blue shirt gave me a brawny reckless bearing, 
and I thought I had never looked so rollicking and strong, or 
felt so well, in all my life." 

Going back to my ofiice and its inanimate routine, the five 
ensuing months, though I did not then realize it, were edu- 
cational. I was a conscientious young fellow in a way, with 
a sufficing sense of my obligation to others, especially my 
father. In reality everything then combined to carry me into 
the army. I was young, unmarried, vigorous, and, in a sense, 
in the way in my father's house, which my brother then 
occupied with his newly married wife; moreover, I was doing 



War and Army Life 1 1 9 



nothing in a profession profoundly distasteful to me. But I 
fostered a delusion that my presence in Boston was very 
essential to the proper conduct of my father's affairs, and I 
felt no call to arms from any love of adventure. So, ashamed 
to stay at home, conscious that one at least of the family 
ought to be with the colors, I argued the matter continually 
with myself. But it was only slowly, and by increasing 
attacks, that the ever-spreading epidemic got possession 
of me. 

In June, I was suffering from an earlier and Intermittent 
attack, and wrote to my father. Presently I got a letter from 
my brother Henry, who was with him In London. This letter 
has disappeared, together with all my correspondence and 
papers of the years before the war. I am sorry to have lost 
that particular letter, for it now would have an almost his- 
torical value. Few points in connection with my work on my 
father's life have more deeply Interested me than the study 
of Seward's foreign-war panacea for the cure of civil dissen- 
sion, in April-June, 1861 ; and my diary, under date of June 
25, 1 861, contained a reference to this letter, written by 
Henry the day after the receipt by my father of that despatch 
No. 10, of May 21st, from Seward, which Lincoln emascu- 
lated: "Tcnday I received a letter from Henry which fell on 
me like a thunderbolt from a clear sky; for, after six pages of 
general matter, he closed In a grand panic, telling me that 
the day before a despatch had been received from Seward 
which meant European war — that It would come within 
two months. His own faith In Seward was, he said, shaken, 
for he seemed resolved to lash the country Into a foreign war. 
As for me, he advised me to keep cool, not gratifying my 
military ardor at present, but holding In reserve for a great 



1 20 Charles Francis Adams 

Canadian campaign. This letter almost terrified me, chiefly 
because of Seward. Would it not be foolish under present 
circumstances, and wicked under any, to force a third party, 
against its will and without provocation into a bloody war, 
merely because domestic contentions were getting too hot.?'* 

But, all the same, the letter served to cool my immediate 
ardor. The struggle in which we found ourselves engaged was 
at that time just beginning to assume its correct proportions 
in our eyes; and I chafed bitterly over the empty escort duty 
I was doing as one of the rank and file of the Fourth Battalion 
— tramping the streets continually, seeing the three-year 
regiments from Maine and New Hampshire off on their way 
to Washington; and I wrote In reply to Henry that I was 
"still eager for release. And why should I not be.? Have I 
not failed in my profession.? Am I not continually hungry 
for some outside stimulus ? Is it not now offered me.? And in 
what respect has my past been so successful, or in what way 
is my future so brilliant in promise, that I should so long 
hesitate to risk my life In this quarrel?" 

A few weeks later my diary recorded a portent I still well 
remember; though I have never seen it alluded to In any book 
on that period. One evening early In July we had been drill- 
ing in the armory of the Battalion, then In the old Boylston 
Market Building, corner of Washington and Boylston Streets. 
As we left it, turning towards the Common, the exclamation 
burst from several at once, "Why, there's a comet!" It was 
the great comet of i86l — the comet which took the whole 
scientific world by surprise; for Its advent had not been fore- 
told, and of it nothing was known. As striking as it was un- 
foreseen, it fairly burst on a startled world. The next day 
the astronomers confessed themselves as much at a loss con- 



TVar and Army Life 



121 



cerning it as the most superstitious layman, and I wrote of 
it: "Close to the Dipper and, as it were, in the centre of our 
Heavens, with its head not far from the North-star, its trail 
streamed away to the southward like a milky way. But the 
question which perplexed all — astronomers and laymen — 
was: Where did it come from, and how did it get here? But 
here it is, brilliant beyond description as it streams across 
the sky. Already it is vanishing, and in a few nights will be 
invisible. What a curious coincidence! In Europe, it can 
hardly have been seen at all, for it shone high in our Heavens. 
It has come on our National Anniversary, bursting upon us 
unheralded and in the midst of our civil commotions. Its 
stay seems likely to be as short as it is brilliant. Who can 
read us the riddle?" 

On the 4th of July, Gordon's regiment, afterwards the 
memorable Second Massachusetts Infantry, went oflF, we, 
the Fourth Battalion, doing escort service. It was largely 
oihcered by my old friends, who crowded the platforms of the 
cars and waved salutes as the train got in motion. It was a 
day of great heat; and " then, as usual after thus seeing others 
on their way to the real strife, we quietly marched back to 
our armory — and were not ashamed!" A few days later 
" Stephen Perkins, one of the very few close friends of my 
own I ever had, went off, too; and I did not even see him 
before he went. At the last moment he accepted a second 
lieutenant's commission in the Gordon regiment, and fol- 
lowed it two days after. I had advised his going; but, when 
he departed so suddenly, his going fell heavily on me. 
Whether I ever see him again depends on the fate of war." 
I never did see him again. Thirteen months later he was 
killed at Cedar Mountain, in Virginia. I realized that a place 



122 



Charles Francis Adarris 



was made vacant in my circle not again to be filled. I have 
the sense of that loss still. 

The Bull Run experience came a few days after the de- 
parture of the Second. My diary contained a long entry 
relating to it, simply setting forth the sensations of one 
individual American far removed from the scene of action. 
That incident of the war and the ensuing stampede occurred 
on a Sunday. I passed the day at Quincy, and the battle, 
well known to be impending, was the one topic of thought or 
talk. Monday morning the papers were full of encouraging 
reports; but very general. Getting to my office I had just 
finished a letter, when "my heart sank within me as I sud- 
denly heard the newsboys shout in the street, 'Retreat of the 
Federal Army!' Just then Dana (R. H.) came in on some 
business; often have I seen Dana under trying circumstances, 
but never before distrait, or outwardly flustered. But now 
the tidings of a reverse weighed heavily on him, and he 
could n't even pretend to think or talk of anything else. At 
that time we supposed it was simply an orderly retreat 
to Centreville, which seemed bad enough; and, though I 
could n't work, in this pleasant faith I remained until, leav- 
ing the office, I met Caspar Crowninshield looking abso- 
lutely pale, and he then poured out to me the frightful tale 
of running men, captured artillery, abandoned arms and 
blasted honor. I too turned pale as I listened. We started 
for the news-room, and, passing through State Street, we 
could not help observing those strange and significant little 
knots of men with troubled faces, so suggestive of times of 
deep excitement." Dining at Quincy, we were unable to 
resist the desire to know what further tidings might have 
come, and Caspar and I drove back to town to see Boston in 



War and Army Life 1 2 3 

the hour of bitterest defeat. "The news we found, in some 
respects, a Uttle less discouraging; but, as for the city, its 
quiet was remarkable. A few crowds lingered about the tele- 
graph offices and the newspaper buildings, long closed, and 
those composing them stood in small knots, talking in sub- 
dued tones, and circulating the most awful rumors as to the 
dead and missing. Nervous excitement was the feature of the 
night; but the city was wholly quiet, and no news could be 
obtained." 

Bull Run was followed by a regular panic — one of many, 
preceding and following, in which Washington either was, 
or was believed to be, in danger of capture. During it, my 
mind was always balancing arguments, should I go, or stay? 
I then began to realize the mistake I had made in not going 
earlier, and I wrote: "Would to God now that I had been 
ordered away, or had of my own accord joined some organ- 
ization sent forward to Washington in April last, that I too 
might have been found ready, when to be ready was the 
duty of every man. But not," etc., etc., through the whole 
gamut of honest self-deception. There was then, as subse- 
quent events showed, no earthly reason why I should not 
have gone, and the best of reasons why I should go, and go 
at once; but, I argued, if I now go, "I do so because I am 
carried away by the enthusiasm of those around me, or ia 
the desire of a new and exciting life, with a chance of mili- 
tary distinction. I feel that war is not my vocation; and 
that, In deserting the law for It, I should give up a profession 
for which I am little adapted for one to which I am adapted 
even less. This disposes also of my chance of military dis- 
tinction, and leaves only the question of yielding to the 
contagion about me. That a soldier's life would give a new 



124 Charles Francis Adams 

impetus to my energies, I know; that in it I should be happy 
and grow, I am well enough aware; incidentally, also, it 
might, and, I fancy, would lead to many advantageous 
things; but these possible advantages, though they weigh 
heavily enough with me, will not justify my leaving the 
manifest duties which ought to keep me here. My father 
has entrusted me with the care of the bulk of his property, 
and never was property so difficult to manage as it now is," 
etc., etc., "and these considerations of real duty must out- 
weigh the possible advantages to result from novelty, excite- 
ment and activity. Yes ! this chance is gone by, and I feel 
that I shall not take part in the war." All of which shows 
that at twenty-five I was a good deal of a prig, as well as 
addicted to a mild form of sophistry. The fact was that my 
father, with the coldness of temperament natural to him, 
took a wholly wrong view of the subject and situation, did 
not believe in any one taking a hand in actual fight, and 
wholly failed to realize that it would have been an actual 
disgrace had his family, of all possible families American, 
been wholly unrepresented in the field. And I was the one 
to go ! At the same time, I did understand myself, and rec- 
ognize my own limitations. I had no natural call to a mili- 
tary life. 

Early in September the Twentieth broke camp at Read- 
ville, and went to the Potomac. The Twentieth was largely 
officered by my friends. Frank Palfrey, wounded and dis- 
abled at Antietam, was its lieutenant-colonel ; Paul Revere, 
killed at Gettysburg, was major. I saw them ofi". With them 
went Caspar Crowninshield, my household companion during 
the summer, destined to be my camp companion later on, 
and friend for long years. He died early in 1897, while I was 



War and Army Life 1 2 5 

living in Florence. It was a thoughtful day for me — that 
pleasant, soft September noon when I shook hands all around 
in the bustling camp, and then rode home to Quincy; and I 
wrote In my diary that "I tried to feel satisfied with Quincy 
and myself. I might have commanded the right of the line 
of that regiment; and, instead, I am scolding tenants, audit- 
ing bills, discussing repairs, rendering accounts, and so — 
doing my duty ! — Pshl" 

This was In September, and the struggle w^ent on all 
through that month and the following. At last things were 
ripe, and what may be termed the psychological crisis came 
about. On the 30th of October, I thus recorded a very mem- 
orable event in my life: "I have astonished myself within 
forty-eight hours. I have applied for the commission in 
the cavalry regiment, which, on Saturday last, I declined! 
Monday afternoon I went out to ride. It was a clear, windy 
afternoon, and the autumn leaves gleamed through the crisp 
October air In the afternoon sunshine. As I was walking my 
horse through the Braintree woods and meditating on my 
enforced staying at home, it suddenly flashed across me. 
Why do I stay at home? And sure enough the reasons that, 
two months ago, seemed so strong, all had vanished. The 
business questions were all disposed of; nothing more re- 
quiring my presence here seemed likely to arise; and so, 
Why should I not got The first sensation was not pleasant; 
and I found myself instinctively clinging to my old, old 
reasons, now only excuses; but. In another moment, I was 
all aglow. During that ride, I thought of nothing else; and, 
when I got home from it, my mind was made up. I said 
nothing to any one; but, yesterday, I sent a note to Sargent, 
asking for a captaincy." The regiment in question was the 



1 2 6 Charles Francis Adams 

First Massachusetts Cavalry; Sargent was its lieutenant- 
colonel — Horace Binney Sargent, of the class of 1843; in 
1 861 a man of a little less than forty, whom I had known 
rather well for some years back; and, for some reason, had 
of him conceived a good opinion, which subsequent events 
in no way confirmed. Meanwhile, my delay had been pro- 
ductive. In one respect at least, of fortunate results. In 
the earliest stages of the war the powers that were had been 
slow in reaching any adequate conception either of its mag- 
nitude or of the time it would occupy. It had been assumed 
that no volunteer mounted regiments would be called into 
the service, as the preparation and training of cavalry re- 
quired more time than could be given in view of the early 
ending of the conflict then anticipated as of course. No 
cavalry regiment from Massachusetts was called for until 
August; and though, like so many other of my friends, I 
might not improbably have then been transferred to it from 
an earlier Infantry organization, I was in October just in 
time. Meeting Sargent in one of my afternoon rides, it had 
occurred to him to offer me a commission; which I, at the 
time, declined, in accordance with my earlier theory of duty 
at home. A few days later the cogitations of that afternoon 
ride through the Braintree woods in the October atmosphere 
settled the question. From that moment I did not again 
hesitate. The relief of a resolution taken was great. Even 
now, though more than fifty years have since passed on, 
I look back on that ride as at the moment of an inspiration 
— the time when I resolved to burst the bonds, and strike 
out into the light from the depth of the darkness. No wiser 
determination did I ever reach. 

In November the news one day reached Boston of the 



IFar and Army Life 1 2 7 



stopping of the Trent by Captain Wilkes, and the seizure of 
Mason and Slidell, the Confederate "envoys." In vievy of 
my subsequent investigations of this affair, and conclusions 
thereon as set forth in the elaborate paper contained in the 
published Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety for November, 191 1,' my contemporary record was 
rather curious, reflecting the tempestuous character of the 
time: "I have never known news spread so quickly, or seen 
people so astonished, so delighted and so perplexed. First 
came a cackle of joy; and then, immediately on its heels, the 
question, What will England do? Immediately on hearing the 
news I went round to Dana's (R. H.) office, and asked about 
the law. The common fear as to England's attitude was 
I found, not shared in that quarter; for Dana crowed with 
delight as I told him, declaring that 'the Ambassador' could 
on that issue 'blow Earl Russell out of the water'; and pro- 
nouncing himself ready to stake his 'professional reputation 
on the proposition.' " During the ensuing days, the seizure, 
and the law relating to it, were the sole subjects of conver- 
sation, and the newspapers were prolific of arguments and 
precedents; "but," I wrote, "no argument or citation of 
authorities could shake off the sense of alarm, and, in the 
face of the law, stocks would fall; which last fact clearly 
showed that our talk of going to war with England had in it 
a considerable infusion of brag. Still, our friends 'the Am- 
bassadors' were in durance vile, which was a solid comfort; 
and, in sleet and snow, in chilling winds and under cheerless 
skies, my spirits rose as I walked to and from the railroad 
station (for we were still at Quincy, and my walk to the 
train was over the hill and commanded a full view of Boston 



1 XLV. 35. 



1 2 8 Charles Francis Adams 



Bay), and looked at the low, distant walls of Fort Warren, 
surrounded by the steel-blue sea, and reflected that those 
amiable gentlemen were there; and there they would remain! 
I remembered the last exhibition I saw Mason make of 
himself in the Senate-chamber; and I smacked my lips with 

joy." 

It was on the 19th of December that I at last learned 
definitely that my name had been sent in for the commission 
of first lieutenant. That evening, in the exuberance of my 
joy, I wrote: "Well, at last my commission! Within the 
next four days I shall leave this room, and my native city. 
My office will know me no more, and to my profession I shall 
bid a long farewell. A new existence opens before me; and, 
when I return to the old haunts, I hope it will at least be in 
more prosperous times and with more sanguine feelings." 
My surprise would have been considerable, had I then been 
informed that five full and eventful years — eventful to me 
no less than to the community — were to pass away, before 
I, then married and in my thirty-first year, was again to 
find myself a resident in Boston. But, none the less, it was, 
for me, a great, a blessed break in life! 

Meanwhile, at the moment, I bothered myself not much 
over the future. The cavalry regiment had that day come 
into town to show itself and be reviewed. I saw it pass 
through the streets; and, finally, by chance merely, went to 
the Common. "There I found an immense crowd; but I 
could not help being struck by the change. The enthusiasm 
and glow of the spring and summer were gone. It was the 
same place, and there were the outgoing soldiers and there 
were the people; but the spirit was gone. It was December; 
and very different from those pleasant days in June. I got 



TVar and Army Life 1 2 9 

within the lines, and went to headquarters. There I fell in 
with Colonel Harrison Ritchie, who astonished me by the 
information that my name had, the day previous, been sent 
in to the Governor, for a commission. Rarely have I ever 
felt more elated. I almost gasped with delight. I w^as then 
really off! Law and office seemed at once to vanish into a 
dim distance, as a new life opened. Its exposures, hardships 
and dangers I gave no thought to in my burst of genuine 
satisfaction." 

Looking back now, fifty years after, were I asked whether 
I w^ould give up as an experience of subsequent value, both 
educationally and in the w^ay of reminiscence, my three years 
at Harvard or my three and a half years in the army, I would 
have great difficulty in reaching a decision. On the whole, I 
am inclined to think that my three and a half years of mili- 
tary service and open-air life were educationally of incom- 
parably the greater value of the tw'o. And especially was 
this so for me, constituted as I was and yet am. It gave me 
just that robust, virile stimulus to be derived only from a 
close contact with Nature and a roughing it among men and 
in the open air, which I especially needed. The experiment 
was, it is true, a somewhat risky one, and involved not a few 
hair-breadth escapes; but I succeeded in getting through 
without sustaining any lasting personal or physical injury, 
or any moral injury at all. I never was wounded; and though, 
w^hen mustered out of the service in the summer of 1865 I 
was a physical wreck, eighteen months of change and a sub- 
sequent temperate and healthy life repaired all waste and 
injury. Thus, so far as physique is concerned, I from my 
army experience got nothing but good. I was, and at seventy- 
seven am, in every way the better for it. Otherwise, that 



130 Charles Francis Adams 

experience was not only picturesque, but of the greatest pos- 
sible educational value. For two years enjoying it keenly, it, 
so to speak, made a man of me. 

And yet, somewhat paradoxically, I have never looked 
back on that army experience with any degree of unalloyed 
satisfaction. During my service — and it was a very active 
service — I did my duty as well as I knew how, and to the 
best of my ability. I never shirked, and never got into any 
trouble from which I did not extricate myself with a reason- 
able degree of credit, if not in every instance altogether to 
my own subsequent satisfaction. In many cases what I ought 
to have done or said was much clearer to me afterwards than 
at the time. And yet, in connection with that whole experi- 
ence I am conscious of being more and more impressed with 
a sense of my own limitations, deficiencies and shortcomings. 
Not soldierly by nature, or of a daring and aggressive temper, 
I have come more and more to recognize that not only had 
my previous training in no way fitted me for the severe 
experiences I then challenged, but also I have grown pain- 
fully and ever increasingly conscious of the fact that I was not 
aware of my own lack of preparation and any preliminary 
training. So to me now it is simply shocking to think of the 
responsibilities we then lightly assumed, and the absence in 
us of any adequate realizing sense of the nature of those 
responsibilities. When I went into active service and the 
command of men, my sole acquaintance with military life 
and its duties was derived from my four weeks' tour of duty 
at Fort Independence, where, a member of the Fourth Bat- 
talion, M.V.M., I acquired a little knowledge of the manual 
and a smattering of the details of guard duty and of company 
and battalion drill. It amounted in fact to nothing at all — 



JVar and Army Life 1 3 1 

not even the alphabet of a calling; and yet in my estimate it 
seemed all that was needful. If in 1861, instead of passing 
the summer at Quincy and in my office, I had servxd an 
apprenticeship for three months in any military school, no 
matter what, it would afterwards have been to me of infinite 
service and incalculable value. As it was, I, like all the rest, 
was a mere tyro, without even an adequate sense of my own 
utter insufficiency, and the consequent desire to be better 
informed. 

This lack of preliminary training affected also my whole 
subsequent military life. I never was properly qualified as 
an officer; and yet, before I got through, I performed, and 
in doing so acquitted myself quite as well as the average, the 
duties and obligations of a colonel of a regiment of twelve 
hundred men. But as I think of the risks I in so doing ran, 
not only for myself, but for my command, I am dismayed. 
Still, what I most needed I never had — a competent and 
kindly instructor, a military preceptor and model. At the 
very outset ill fortune placed me in this respect in one of the 
most unfortunate and altogether trying positions any young 
fellow could have been projected into. I was put under 
the immediate command of two men even less qualified to 
instruct than I myself; and who together probably were as 
unfitted for the work to be performed as was possible. And 
these were my military preceptors! The constitutionally 
unqualified were to instruct the uninformed. Into that pain- 
ful portion of my experience I do not care to enter. Let it 
pass into oblivion. I staggered and blundered through it. 
Nevertheless, educationally, my ill luck was indeed phenom- 
enal; and so impresses me even more now than at the time. 
But that episode constitutes a page in my experiences to 



132 Charles Francis Adams 



which I refer in extenuation, as it were, of my own short- 
comings. As an officer, all I ever learned I learned from 
rough experience and as an outcome of my own blunders. 
Nevertheless, though my case was in all these respects 
exceptional, I was as an officer indisputably one of the better 
class ; for, though I did not appreciate my own deficiencies, I 
at least had a sense of obligation, and a high standard of 
duty. Nor did I ever try to advertise myself or to exploit 
my services. Considering everything, I think I may say I got 
out of it uncommonly well. 

Recurring now to the course of events, it was on a Sun- 
day, the 28th of December, 1861 — a very dull, gloomy and 
generally forbidding day — that the First Massachusetts 
Cavalry was loaded on to railroad cars, and started for New 
York as its first stopping place, and subsequent point of 
embarkation for Port Royal, then recently fallen into our 
hands. I had reported for duty a day or two previous only, 
and as first lieutenant been assigned to a company. Going 
from a city house in Boston into a canvas camp at Christmas, 
in Massachusetts, is, as I see it now, rather a severe experi- 
ence. Then I was young and full of ardor, and disposed to 
take everything in an uncomplaining spirit. But, certainly, 
as compared with what I remembered of the same sort of 
thing during the sunamer months, our home parting was to 
the last degree dreary. So far as my own position was con- 
cerned, it was by no means so bad as it might have been. 
I was not the utter greenhorn in uniform I would have been 
but for my experience at Fort Independence; and I took hold 
as one somewhat familiar with camp routine. None the less, 
it was the very close of the year — cold, drear and pitiless; 
and it required youth and health and buoyancy to stand it. 



TVar and Army Life 1 3 3 

My description at the time of that Sunday of camp-breaking 
was not bad. My brother John came out from Boston to 
bring Caspar Crowninshield, his wife's brother, and me, some 
articles and bid us good-bye. He found us busy with prepara- 
tion; but, at last, all was ready. "What a dreary three hours 
followed! A cold, grey sky overhead, with ice and frozen 
mud underfoot. In the distance, the familiar Blue Hills 
looked black and cheerless, their sides patched with snow. 
The air was rough and biting, and we, tired, hungry and 
impatient, waited for the ending of inexplicable delays. John 
alone was there to see me off; and, for this, I was thankful. 
I felt in a mood neither regretful nor sentimental; and, so 
far from lingering over farewells to home, I asked only to 
get away. It was dreary enough. Little knots of friends were 
collected everyv\^here; but no one seemed to care for anything. 
Grief and joy alike were frozen out. Finally, John gave out, 
and declared he could stand the dreary discomfort no longer; 
and I must say it was not without a sensation of envy I in 
thought followed him back to his comfortable dinner. At 
last we found ourselves on board the cars. I can pretend no 
sentiment at leaving home behind me; I felt none. The only 
strong sensation I had was one of relief at getting in motion 
and, at last, having something to eat." 

I have dwelt in detail over this period of my life simply 
because, passing it in an eventful time, I then kept a contem- 
poraneous record. That record extended through the larger 
part of the following year, until my regiment reached Virginia 
in early September, 1862, and I went into active field serv^ice. 
I then almost perforce discontinued it, nor was it renewed 
for twenty-six years; though I believe I always kept a brief 
daily memorandum of where I was, and what I was doing. 



1 34 Charles Francis Adams 

During my years of active service in the war, my corre- 
spondence with my family supplied, however, the place of a 
daily record, and much better than a diary; my letters have 
also been preserved. I have never looked them over except 
casually, one or two; but those I have looked over I found 
natural, vivid and extremely interesting. It has always been 
my intention to go over my family correspondence of that 
period, and prepare portions of it for publication as a con- 
temporaneous war record, carried on, half in London and 
half from the camp. I have no doubt it would make a 
most interesting narrative, by no means without historical 
value; but now (1912) whether I ever get to it is more 
than doubtful. So much to do; so little done! 

That, however, is no part of my present plan; but those 
letters, unlike my diary, I do not propose to destroy. For 
present purposes, from this point on what I have to say is 
mere reminiscence, and that at long range. Consequently, 
of small value. My army experience comes first, extending 
over three years and a half. 

For a really considerable time I was now suddenly brought 
into close touch with Nature and man; and, in so far, I have 
not passed my entire life under conventional conditions. 
Yet, as I have already said, I had no particular military 
aptitude. Far from being a born soldier, 1 was in many 
respects unfitted for such a career. Not quick, daring or 
ready-witted, robust but not muscularly agile, I could not 
take advantage of sudden or unforeseen circumstances. With 
no personal magnetism, I was rather deficient in presence of 
mtind in time of peril. The most that could be said of me 
was that, as a camp ofiicer, I was distinctly above the aver- 
age. I was conscientious, understood my duties fairly well, 



War and Army Life 1 3 5 



and cared anxiously for my men and horses. But I did not 
understand myself, nor did I take in the situation. Unseeing 
of my opportunities, I quite failed to realize in any broad 
way the nature of the occasion. I went into the service with 
a strong sense of duty, and a desire to see hard work, in no 
way seeking to save myself. I had no conception of ajmy 
functions, or of the relative fields of usefulness of the staff 
and line. In common with most of my friends, I had rather 
a contempt for the staff positions; we wanted to be where 
the work and hardship were, and where the knocks were to 
be looked for. It was in some respects a praiseworthy feeling, 
and I lived up to it; but living up to it involved much 
hardship and danger, besides leaving out of sight, in my own 
individual case, that, while I had no particular aptitude for 
line work, I would have made a really valuable staff officer, 
had I only diligently qualified myself for the position. But 
on this subject, and my own insufficiency so far as my correct 
understanding of myself and the situation, and myself in 
connection with the possibilities of the situation, were con- 
cerned, I a few years ago set forth my more enduring con- 
clusions in the Memoir I prepared of my friend Theodore 
Lyman, for the Historical Society. ^ He was more mature; 
I was like all the rest. As it was, I had to learn by hard 
experience that, in warfare on a large scale, a regimental 
officer, no matter how high his grade, sees nothing and knows 
nothing of what is going on. He is a mere minor wheel, when 
not simply a cog, in a vast and to him in greatest part unin- 
telligible machine, moving on given lines to a possible result; 
wholly regardless of his comfort or even life. Obedience, self- 
sacrifice and patient endurance are the qualities most in 

' 2 Proceedings, xx. 1 5 8-6 1. 



136 Charles Francis Adams 

demand for him; but as for any intelligent comprehension 
of the game in progress, that for the regimental officer is 
quite beyond his ken. Even a colonel of cavalry — in many 
respects a most delightful grade — knows only his own com- 
mand, and is acquainted with nothing beyond his brigade 
front. He and his are but one small factor in an immense 
whole. A well-organized staff, on the contrary, constitutes 
the army's brain, and everything centres at Headquarters. 
There, and there alone, you know and see. So, the ideal 
position at which I should have aimed, had I only known 
enough, would have been the inspector-generalship of an 
army corps under a well-qualified corps commander. For 
this part, had I only realized it, I was well qualified; I needed 
only a well-defined plan in my own mind, and a patient 
study of functions. My lack of an early training was to be 
supplied by close observation and constant tact. At the 
close of the war, in February, 1865, that very position was 
offered to me, and by A. A. Humphreys, the best corps com- 
mander in the whole army; and I declined it! I stand aghast 
now at my own folly; I threw such a chance away! But I 
will do myself the justice to say that I did so most regret- 
fully; and only from a strong sense of obligation to the regi- 
ment of which I had then just been made colonel. Duty or 
no duty, I have regretted it ever since. Though now I realize 
how little qualified I was for the position, had I accepted it. 
As I have already intimated, my initiation into military 
life was most unlucky — that is the only word to apply to 
it. It was a case of hard luck! I set out wrong; and my mis- 
takes and misfortunes followed me. It is all plain enough 
now; but then I blunderingly groped my way, and the course 
of events was dead against me. It is a long, disagreeable 



War and Army Life 1 3 7 



stor}-; and, while I do not propose unduly to dilate upon it, 
it has its interest. Then, as ever since, my great misfortune 
lay in my utter lack of a nice, ingratiating tact in my deal- 
ings with other men and difficult situations. I was born 
deficient in true objectiveness. It is an inherited deficiency, 
a family trait; but it has been my great handicap and hin- 
drance in life, and never so much so as in the army. Interfer- 
ing with my success, it destroyed my comfort; and help it 
I could not. Well-meaning, conscientious, kind-hearted as I 
felt myself to be, it was not in me — it never has been in 
me — instinctively to do or say the right thing at the proper 

time. 

This fact undoubtedly aggravated my difficulties, and 
prevented me from extricating myself from them, as any 
more adroit man would readily have done. On the other 
hand, I was extremely unlucky; and, wholly by accident, 
found myself during the first six months of my army life — 
my initiation period — in the most trying and spirit-breaking 
position I have known. Looking back on it now, I do not 
see how I stood it; nor, on the other hand, do I now quite see 
what I could have done other than I did do. It came about 
in this wise. 

The First Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry 
was essentially a body of picked men. I have seen many 
military organizations, and soldiers of all kinds and climes; 
and I do not believe there ever were twelve hundred better 
men got together than those composing that regiment. It 
was the first complete cavalry regiment ever organized in 
New England. It was made up largely of Americans, young, 
athletic, ingenious, surprisingly alert and very adaptive. 
I always got along well with my men. We were kith and kin. 



1 3 8 Charles Francis Adams 

Not that I was popular or adored by them, as was Caspar 
Crowninshield, for instance; but they respected me, and I 
did well by them. I had a thoroughly good company — con- 
sidered the best in the regiment. That was "D" Company; 
but originally I was assigned to "H." The colonel of the 
regiment was a Virginian — Robert Williams, a West Point 
graduate and officer of the regular army, strongly recom- 
mended by General Scott, and carefully selected by Gover- 
nor Andrew first to organize and then command the initial 
cavalry regiment. Perfectly trained, and a gentleman of the 
Virginia school, very striking in appearance, Robert Williams 
may then have been some thirty-two years old, and he was a 
good organizer as well as a severe disciplinarian. I propose 
to deal kindly with him; but, in point of fact, he was all-out- 
side ! There was no real stuff in him, and — he could n't help 
drinking! Brought up in the regular service, he did not under- 
stand our Massachusetts men, and his discipline was severe 
to brutality. He had a set of us young Harvard fellows for 
officers, who served him like dogs, who bowed before him in 
blind, unquestioning obedience. Better material out of which 
to make officers never existed; but we needed kindly, sym- 
pathetic instruction. We did n't get it! Still, Williams did 
know his business, and was a good officer in camp; but in 
the field he got speedily demoralized, and, in moments of 
emergency, invariably drunk. Later, I was his personal aid, 
and the adjutant of the regiment; and, first and last, I went 
through incredible experiences with him. As an officer in 
presence of the enemy or under the stress of campaign, 
Williams was an utter failure; and so recognized. Prone to 
quarrel, he never got any promotion; and, shortly after 
Antietam, left the regiment, and returned to his adjutant- 



JVar and Army Life 1 3 9 



generalcy, in Washington. Still, from Williams I did learn 
something. 

Williams, as I have said, was a Virginian and a West 
Pointer; typically, both. I got along fairly well enough with 
him; but in no single respect was he a man I took to, or who 
took to me. He was far, very far, from my ideal of the head 
of a military family. He lacked innate courtesy as well as 
stability; and, above all, he was wholly deficient in character 
and in the sterling qualities. Still, I got on with him. My 
trouble, curiously enough, came from Massachusetts men 
— men I ought to have known all my life and been as of one 

family. 

Leaving Massachusetts at the close of December, and 
after a short stay in New York, we were shipped to South 
Carolina, where we arrived about the middle of January. 
Two battalions went into camp at Hilton Head. Company H 
was in the Beaufort battalion; and there I remained four 
months. It was my apprenticeship. I was starting in on a 
new life; I had everything to learn. I look back on it now 
with a shudder of disgust. Fortunately, I liked the life; and 
the climate, after Boston, was delightful. I had, too, among 
the officers many friends ; but, in spite of all that, it was the 
worst experience I ever had. Colonel Sargent was in local 
command of the Battalion; Captain Sargent commanded H 
Company. I was the only lieutenant of that company on 
duty; Davis, the second, shrewdly getting himself detailed 
as battalion adjutant. Lucius Manlius Sargent, their father, 
was well known in Boston, a great antiquarian and news- 
paper writer ("Sigma" and "A Sexton of the Old School" 
in the columns of the Evening Transcript) — a man of stand- 
ing and wealth. Horace and Manlius were children by dif- 



140 Charles Francis Adams 

ferent mothers. Both brothers were men of large figure and 
great muscular strength ; very proud of their physique and, 
unquestionably, men of courage. Manlius, a graduate of 
Harvard in the class of '48, had studied medicine, and, in 
1862, must have been about thirty-five. 

In May, Williams was made commander of the post at 
Hilton Head; Sargent was transferred to the command of 
the two battalions there stationed, and my old and life- 
long friend — before, then, and now — Henry L. Higginson, 
recently made major, came up and assumed command at 
Beaufort. I now in my diary described my life as "a very 
pleasant and comfortable one." In early June, operations 
began on James Island, and, by a fortunate combination 
of circumstances which I at the time regarded as most 
unlucky, I was sick in the hospital when H Company was 
ordered off, and I never again rejoined it. For, when I was 
well enough to report for duty, I was assigned as an aid to 
Williams, then acting as brigade commander, and I continued 
to serve in that capacity until, in early September, the regi- 
ment was ordered to Virginia. In that capacity, and under 
Williams, I had what they are pleased to call "my baptism 
of fire," or, in other words, took part in my first engage- 
ment. 

A day or two later came the James Island fight. We of 
the staff knew that something was impending, and we were 
called at l a.m. My record reminds me that, as we moved 
forward in the grey of the early dawn, I felt in no way heroic. 
Presently, Williams, whom we were following, "rode through 
a hedge, along a road, and then over a wall into an open field; 
and there we were directly in front of the enemy's works. 
Here I saw my first shell fall. It did not explode. It fell a 



TVar and Army Life 141 



few yards to our right, bouncing, and then rolling along in a 
very vicious way. It impressed me unpleasantly. Here we 
stayed a long time." We of the staff were kept very busy 
carrying orders, etc. "Though a heavy and incessant fire 
of infantry was going on, the roar of the artillery and the 
exploding of shells after they had hurtled and shrieked over 
our heads, so completely drowned the musketry that I do 
not think I heard the report of a small arm during the entire 
engagement. Yet, when I was sent with an order to our 
extreme left, I distinctly saw the puffs of dust raised by the 
musket-balls dropping about me. But I now found I had 
lost all sense of danger, and was thoroughly up to my work. 
My little mare did beautifully. Nothing scared her; not 
even the explosion of shells close by; and she carried me 
handsomely through morasses and over ditches without end; 
and she alone of all the staff horses followed the colonel 
wherever he went. After the action was well on, I began to 
enjoy it." The affair was badly managed, and the single 
attack was soon repulsed, our loss being heavy. We had some 
queer experiences that day, and it was a wonder we were not 
all killed. "Still, it was a pleasant feeling, that of riding out 
of my first fight, having done well in it. I don't think I ever 
experienced so genial a glow. As we rode out of the woods 
we passed our regiment — the cavalry — drawn up behind 
them, where they had been waiting the last four hours. We 
had been engaged; they had not. We felt, or at least I did, 
like a veteran of an hundred fights ; and I got off my horse 
with a new and exalted sense of my own importance. It was 
very pleasant. In fact, it was not until I had dismounted 
that I realized how much I had enjoyed myself that day. 
But, honestly and unaffectedly, I do not think I ever passed 



142 Charles Francis Adams 

a more pleasurable morning in my life. The excitement of a 
battle-field is grand." 

Such was my contemporaneous record of my first engage- 
ment. Afterwards I was in many; and those I do not pro- 
pose to particularize, or to give any descriptions of my part 
therein. I copy this, a part of the long record of my first 
experience in that way, merely because it was written at 
the time; also, as showing the extremely adverse and dis- 
heartening conditions under which I entered on army life. 
That I never for a moment even was sickened of that life, or 
looked back regretfully to my office and civilized existence 
speaks well, it seems to me, for my robustness ; as, also, it is 
highly suggestive of my extreme distaste for the law and for 
ofiice routine. But, assuredly, I never at that juncture did 
look back regretfully. My only fear was that I might be 
forced to give the new life up. 

Meanwhile, as usual in face of steady persistence, luck 
slowly turned. In August, as a consequence of McClellan's 
reverses in Virginia, the regiment was ordered up from South 
Carolina; and, so far as I was concerned, it was high time. 
There was in my destroyed record a rather curious entry 
bearing on this subject. It was under the date of April 19, 
1862; just a year from the fall of Sumter. When that 
occurred, and the President's call for troops immediately 
followed, the object of the muster was declared to be the 
re-taking of the captured fort [Sumter] ; and I well remember 
the dread I felt of, possibly, being sent down to languish in 
what I assumed to be those fever-smitten swamps. And now, 
exactly one year from that time, I wrote thus: "A year ago 
my great apprehension was lest I might be sent to rot on the 
islands before Sumter; but now, here I am, just there, and 



JVar and Army Life 143 



the 'rotting' process has not yet begun. Again on picket 
duty at the Milne plantation; and it is beyond description 
beautiful. On my table are three bouquets of magnolias, 
roses, and sweet-smelling flowers, a fresh, fragrant atmos- 
phere creeps in through the wide-open window, while be- 
yond is the soft green foliage, such as we at home see only in 
early June. Altogether the spring here, though somewhat 
warm, is a pleasant season, and one good to live in." 

In June, we lay before Sumter. After the failure of the 
expedition and our return to Hilton Head, I continued acting 
as aid to Colonel Williams. My duties were nominal only; 
but, in camp, my commander forswore sack and lived cleanly, 
and I certainly had nothing to complain of. But Hilton Head 
in July and August I found a wholly different place from 
Port Royal Island in April. The heat was great; also, con- 
tinuous. I was young, and had never known what it was to 
take care of myself physically; so I neglected all precautions 
of diet and exposure; of course, with the usual result. The 
beach was directly in front of my quarters, and the bathing 
was superb; but the heat was as great by night as by day; 
and, gradually, I broke down under it. By the middle of 
August, though fit for duty, I was in a bad way. The news 
from home was, also, depressing; a succession of reverses; 
and, on the i8th of August, I thus wrote, hearing of our 
reverse at Cedar Mountain — when Banks came up against 
"Stonewall" Jackson — "the Massachusetts Second has 
been badly cut to pieces, and I have lost several old friends, 
and, among them, one, the first of our old Fort Independence 
mess, Harry Russell. More, and most of all, Stephen Perkins 
is reported killed ; and if that be true, the ablest man I ever 
knew, the finest mind I ever met, is lost forever in the briefly 



144 Charles Francis Adams 

reported death of a second lieutenant of volunteer Infantry. 
It is indeed bitter." 

The news proved true of Perkins, but not of Russell. He 
was captured, and did not die till 1905 — over forty years 
aftenvards; and I heard of his death at Assuan, in our second 
visit to Egypt. But in August, 1862, we did not have much 
time to count losses or lament the dead; our turn had come! 
For, only six days later I made the last diary record I was 
to make for twenty-six years, while lying on the transport 
McClellan, off Fort Monroe, on our way to Alexandria. 
There was one portion of that final record which tends to 
show that at the time I was at least in a recipient mood. It 
was rather creditable. On the voyage up, time hanging 
heavily on my hands, I chanced upon Tom Hughes's story 
of Hodson, in his Twelve Years of a Soldier^ s Life in India. It 
made a deep impression on me. We, too, were on our way to 
the 2iwiu\ fighting ground, and Hodson's experience and let- 
ters seemed strangely applicable. I remember writing to my 
people in London about it; and now I find this other record: 
"One lesson I wish I could learn from Hodson — that of 
patience and subordination. He makes me ashamed of my- 
self. He, a captain at thirty-five and when he had long been 
the first soldier in the Indian army; and here am I, impatient 
and reckless, with that same rank in my grasp at the close of 
seven months of service. I am a very ordinary man; he was 
a most uncommon one: it would be well for me and my 
happiness could I take many pages from his book. Is it not 
possible for me also to do my duty unreplningly in the place 
where I find myself, and, by doing it well, fit myself for 
higher? Cannot I too take fortune's buffets and rewards 
with equal grace .^ It does not seem so. Yet it is strange that 



W^ar and Army Life 145 

one small feature In Hodson's anny career in India should 
produce such an effect on me here!" 

This is the last quotation I have to make from my con- 
temporaneous records; and it is not my purpose to write a 
book of war reminiscences. From this point, therefore, I go 
on rapidly. The regiment was forced at once into the most 
active of campaign work — the Antietam episode. We were 
wholly unprepared, and Williams at once became completely 
demoralized — went all to pieces ! I was now made the regi- 
mental adjutant; and a lovely time I had of it! Something 
had happened at Washington, I never quite knew what. 
But Williams disappeared altogether for two days, during 
which he was very much wanted. The regiment meanwhile 
was kicked about in a state of orphanage; and, when 
Williams turned up, looking very shame-faced, his chance 
of a higher command was gone. Consequently, he took the 
field in a totally demoralized frame of mind. Then came 
that awful campaign. Williams did not appear well, or do 
well. I was wholly inexperienced. He then gave us the 
benefit of his regular army jealousies; for he had a great 
contempt as well as dislike for his commanding ofiicer — 
Pleasanton, in fact a decidedly poor stick — and an angry 
flare-up took place, with a fine display of West Point 
Insubordination. 

Williams, very wisely, decided to resign his Massachusetts 
commission, and return to his desk In the Adjutant-General's 
office at Washington. He did so, and his career as a cavalry 
officer, or in the field, then came to a close. It was well for him 
it did. He was utterly unfitted for the stress and excitement 
of active service; while, in his office, he acquitted himself 
well. He rose to be Adjutant-General of the Army, and died 



146 Charles Francis Adams 

somewhere about 1902 or 1903, on the retired Hst, utterly 
broken in health.^ 

Sargent succeeded WiUiams, I remaining adjutant. This, 
however, lasted only a few weeks, when I got my company. 
It was a happy day for me. Meanwhile, forced into active 
campaign immediately on landing from South Carolina, the 
regiment, naturally, went all to pieces. Of our original excel- 
lent mount, there was hardly a horse left. The officers were 
disheartened; the men demoralized. So we went into camp 
to await a new mount and reorganize. Greeley Curtis had 
now become second in command, with Henry Higginson 
next to him. Both good officers, though with no more experi- 
ence than I, strong personal friends, fearless and with some 
sense; much trouble was soon lifted off my shoulders, and 
assumed by them. As adjutant, I knew my duties fairly 
well; and did them. 

In his Memoir of Colonel Henry Lee^ published in 1905, 
John T. Morse, Jr., says that Harry Lee "said what others 
knew and liked to have said by some one, though themselves 
shirking responsibility"; and as illustrative of this he repeats 
a terse characterization of Colonel Lee's, made to his kins- 
man, T. Wentworth Higginson, when editing the Harvard 
Memorial Biographies. Harry Lee then said to Colonel 
Higginson: "Put it down that it will always remain an 
uncertainty whether it was the insane vanity of the elder 
brother, or the drunken insanity of the younger, which 
utterly ruined the finest regiment that ever left Massachu- 
setts." 

The two Sargents were the only superiors I had during my 
entire army experience with whom I was wholly unable to 

* He died August 24, 1901. 



IVar and Army Life 1 47 



get on, or to whom I failed to give satisfaction. Subse- 
quently, I was urged for promotion, out of course, over the 
head of Captain Sargent, by Curtis and Higginson; but I 
refused to allow myself to be considered. I afterwards always 
had a good reputation as an officer; and, at the end of six 
months of excellent opportunity for observation, General 
Humphreys tendered me the highest position on his corps 
staff. 

The winter following the Antietam campaign was passed 
by the regiment in camp at Acquia Creek. Sargent, now 
become colonel, was in conamand, and we learned nothing; 
unless it were to carry insubordination to a fine art. I now 
got my captaincy; and I must do myself the justice to say 
that, while my company was an excellent one, I took great 
pride in it and devoted myself to my duties and its improve- 
ment. Between me and it the most friendly relations existed. 
The trouble, however, was that we were all so inexperienced; 
we knew nothing of the laws of health and self-preservation, 
and we thought those laws not worth knowing. Why any of 
us survived, I cannot now see; but we were young and robust 
as a rule; we lived in the open air; and we were at least tem- 
perate. On the other hand, we had no schools of instruction; 
the regimental quarrels were incessant; the spirit of insub- 
ordination was rife and in the air. None the less, the material 
was all there, and it would assert itself. When the Spring 
came, it was a superb regiment. 

Then followed the long Gettysburg campaign in which we 
were veterans — always, as I now see, self-taught. In the 
very height of it Colonel Sargent somehow got a leave-of- 
absence, and went to Europe. Curtis broke down, poisoned 
by malaria; Higginson and Chamberlain, the two majors, 



148 Charles Francis Adams 

were both Incapacitated by wounds; so also was Captain 
Sargent. So a few of us, boy-captains, ran what remained of 
the regiment. Curtis and HIgginson — my old friends, with 
whom my campaign life was happiness — never came back. 
So, on the whole, this was my best period in the service. 
Somehow, the life agreed with me; I actually enjoyed Its 
hardships, its adventure. Its nearness to Nature and men. 
I alone of the officers asked for no leave of absence; I desired 
none. Perfectly well physically, I was In every way develop- 
ing. That dreary Court Street office seemed a disagreeable 
dream; I was separated from It by a whole existence; I was 
never going back to It; It was the only period of my life in 
which I lived for the present, and took no thought of the 
future. It was a truly glorious existence. 

It was now autumn (November, 1863), and I had been 
nearly two years In the service without a break. That 
autumn campaign was continuous and very severe; and, 
when we went Into winter quarters at Warrenton — some- 
where In early December — the regiment was reduced to a 
skeleton. Well do I now recall my tour of picket duty the 
night the brigade arrived there. The days were the shortest 
of the year, and a heavy freezing rain was falling. My line 
of outposts covered a broken, unsheltered country, and my 
reserv^e was stationed among the stumps of a recently felled 
grove. It was dark as Egypt, and all was desolation; and 
so the dreary hours wore themselves away. Late the next 
morning I was relieved; but for what? The newly formed 
camp was, I well remember, as comfortless and dreary as the 
outpost. How we stood It, I do not now see; but, as I have 
repeatedly said, we were young and strong, buoyant and full 
of resource. 



W^ar and Army Life 1 49 



That winter I got a leave of absence; my company re- 
enlisting and going home — the first in the regiment to do 
so — while I, seeing them to Boston, went to Europe. This 
closed my severe military experience; and it was enough. 
Two full years of company life had completely exhausted it; 
more would have been mere repetition. My letters, doubt- 
less, give a vivid enough picture of what that experience 
was — and it was far and away the greatest of my life — nor 
have I any disposition to indulge in reminiscence. Three 
episodes I have since at different times set down, and they 
are the most striking I recall. 

The first describes the march of the Sixth Corps to Gettys- 
burg on the 2d of July, '63. That was the finest thing in a 
military way I ever saw. There was in it more of the spirit 
and splendor of war. I included it in the Fourth of July 
Address I delivered at Quincy, in 1869, and it has since been 
reprinted in the papers frequently, even in the West. In- 
deed, I came across it somewhere, not long ago. The passage 
is as follows, and I recall the scene now, after an interval of 
close on fifty years, as if of yesterday: "It was late on the 
evening of the first of July, that there came to us rumors of 
heavy fighting at Gettysburg, near forty miles away. The 
regiment happened then to be detached, and its orders for 
the second were to move in the rear of Sedgwick's corps and 
see that no man left the column. All that day we marched 
to the sound of the cannon; Sedgwick, very grim and stern, 
was pressing forward his tired men, and we soon saw that for 
once there would be no stragglers from the ranks. As the 
day grew old and as we passed rapidly up from the rear to 
the head of the hurrying column, the roar of battle grew more 
distinct, until at last we crowned a hill and the contest broke 



150 Charles Francis Adams 



upon us. Across the deep valley, some two miles away, we 
could see the white smoke of the bursting shells, while below 
the sharp incessant rattle of the musketry told of the fierce 
struggle that was going on. Before us ran the straight, white, 
dusty road, choked with artillery, ambulances, caissons, am- 
munition trains, all pressing forward to the field of battle, 
while mixed among them, their bayonets gleaming through 
the dust like wavelets on a river of steel, tired, foot-sore, 
hungry, thirsty, begrimed with sweat and dust, the gallant 
infantry of Sedgwick's corps hurried to the sound of the can- 
non as men might have flocked to a feast. Moving rapidly 
fonvard, we crossed the brook which runs so prominently 
across the map of the field of battle and halted on its further 
side to await our orders. Hardly had I dismounted from my 
horse when, looking back, I saw that the head of the column 
had reached the brook, and deployed and halted on its other 
bank, and already the stream was filled with naked men 
shouting with pleasure as they washed off the sweat of their 
long day's march. Even as I looked, the noise of the battle 
grew louder, and soon the symptoms of movement were 
evident. The rappel was heard, the bathers hurriedly clad 
themselves, the ranks were formed, and the sharp, quick 
snap of the percussion caps told us the men were preparing 
their weapons for action. Almost immediately a general 
officer rode rapidly to the front of the line, addressed to it a 
few brief energetic words, the short, sharp order to move by 
the flank was given, followed immediately by the 'double 
quick,' the officer placed himself at the head of the column, 
and that brave Infantry which had marched almost forty 
miles since the setting of yesterday's sun; which during that 
day had hardly known either sleep, or food, or rest, or shelter 



War and Army Life 1 5 1 

from the July heat, now, as the shadows grew long, hurried 
forward on the run to take its place in the front of battle and 
to bear up the reeling fortunes of the day. . . . 

"Twenty-four hours later we stood on that same ground. 
Many dear friends had yielded up their young lives during 
the hours which had elapsed; but, though twenty thousand 
fellow creatures were wounded or dead around us, though 
the flood-gates of heaven seemed open and the torrents fell 
upon the quick and the dead, yet the elements seemed elec- 
trified with a certain magnetic influence of victory, and, as 
the great army sank down over-wearied in its tracks, it felt 
that the crisis and danger was passed — that Gettysburg 
was iraimortal." 

The two other passages of war reminiscence are contained 
in my "Fenway" Address of April 13, 1899, before the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, and those, also, holding 
the journalistic stage in the usual limited and transitory 
fashion, were extensively printed at the time of delivery. 
They are as follows: 

"As I have already mentioned, it was my fortune at one 
period to participate in a considerable number of battles — 
among them none more famous, nor more fiercely contested, 
than Antietam and Gettysburg. The mere utterance of 
those names stirs the imagination — visions arise at once of 
attack, repulse, hairbreadth escape, carnage and breathless 
suspense. There was, indeed, on those occasions enough and 
to spare of all these; but not, as it chanced, in my particular 
case. Some here will doubtless remember that English fox- 
hunting squire, who has gained for himself a sort of immor- 
tality by following his hounds over Naseby's field, I think 
it was, while the epoch-marking battle was going on. More 



1 5 2 Charles Francis Adams 

yet will recall that ploughman, twice referred to so dramati- 
cally by Zola, intent upon his uninterrupted day's work near 
Sedan, when a dynasty was reeling to its fall. So my abiding 
recollection, as a participant in both Antietam and Gettys- 
burg, is, not of the fierce agony of battle at its height, but 
the enjoyment of two exceedingly refreshing naps. As a 
statement, this, I am aware, is calculated to startle rather 
than to excite admiration; but, to the historian, truth is 
sacred; and the truth is — as I have said! Neither does the 
statement imply any exceptional nerve or indiiTerence to 
danger on my part: I make no claim to anything of the sort. 
It happened in this wise. In the campaigns of both Antietam 
and Gettysburg I was an officer in a regiment of cavalry, 
a mere subordinate, responsible only for obedience to orders. 
At Antietam, in the height of the engagement, the division 
to which my regiment belonged was hurried across the narrow 
stone bridge at the point where the little river intersects the 
Sharpsburg road, and deployed on its further side. We were 
then directly in front of Fitz-John Porter's corps, and between 
it and the Confederate line, covering Sharpsburg. A furious 
artillery duel was going on, to and fro, above our heads, be- 
tween the batteries of Porter's command and those of the 
enemy, we being down in the valley of the river, they on the 
higher ground. The Confederate batteries we could not see; 
nor could they see us. When we first deployed on the further 
side of Antietam Creek, it seemed as if we were doomed — 
so deafening was the discharge of artillery on either side, 
and so incessant the hurtling of projectiles as they passed 
both ways over us. Every instant, too, we expected to be 
ordered to advance on the Confederate batteries. The situa- 
tion was unmistakably trying. But no orders came; and no 



TVar and Army Life 1 5 3 



one was hurt. By degrees it grew monotonous. Presently, 
to relieve our tired horses, we were ordered to dismount, 
and, without breaking the ranks, we officers sat down on 
the sloping hill-side. No one was being struck; I was very 
tired; the noise was deadening; gradually it had on me a lull- 
ing effect; and so I dropped quietly asleep — asleep in the 
height of the battle and between the contending armies! 
They woke me up presently to look after my horse, who 
was grazing somewhat wide; and, after a time, we were 
withdrawn, and sent elsewhere. I believe that day our 
regiment did not lose a man, scarcely a horse. Such is my 
recollection of that veritable charnel-house, Antietam; — 
and I was a participant — indeed in the fore-front of the 

battle. 

"Gettysburg was different; and yet, as respects somno- 
lence, in my case much the same. During the days preceding 
that momentous struggle, my command had been frequently 
engaged, and suffered heavy loss. We who remained were 
but a remnant. On the 3d of July the division to which we 
belonged occupied the high, partially wooded ground on the 
right of the line, covering the army's flank and rear. It was 
a bright July day; hot, and with white clouds slowly rolling 
across the sky, premonitory of a thunder-storm during the 
later afternoon. From our position the eye ranged over a 
wide expanse of uneven country, fields broken by woods, 
showing nowhere any signs of an army movement, much 
less of conflict. A quiet, midsummer, champaign country. 
Neither our lines nor those of the enemy were visible to us; 
and the sounds of battle were hushed. Waiting for orders 
and for action, we dismounted, out of regard for our horses 
as well as ourselves, and sat or lay upon the turf. Inured to 



1 5 4 Charles Francis Adams 



danger by contact long and close, and thoroughly tired in 
body as overwrought in mind, we listened for the battle to 
begin; and, shortly after noon, the artillery opened. We did 
not know it — we could see nothing in that direction — but 
it covered the famous advance of Pickett's Virginia division 
upon Meade's centre — that wonderful, that unsurpassed 
feat of arms; and, just then, lulled by the incessant roar 
of the cannon, while the fate of the army and the nation 
trembled in the balance, at the very crisis of the great con- 
flict, I dropped quietly asleep. It was not heroic; but it was, 
I hold, essentially war, though by no means war as imagined 
in the work-room of the theoretic historian." 

Of my first trip to Europe — that delightful burst of sun- 
light from the midst of the awful storm-clouds of those years 
— I have elsewhere made record; so here I pass on. The 
change from home and office life was to me at that period so 
thoroughly enjoyable that I never at all realized what line 
and company life in war was until released from it. Once 
released, and knowing another existence, a return to it 
seemed unendurable. While on my English leave I shrank 
from the thought. It so chanced that my college as well as 
life-long friend, Theodore Lyman, was then attached to 
Meade's Headquarters. He had no army rank, but, knowing 
Meade personally, the matter had been arranged. He had 
got Governor Andrew to appoint him on his military staff, 
and then to detail him for service at the Headquarters of 
the Army of the Potomac. It was an ingenious and to me 
as well as to him a most useful arrangement; and Theodore 
at least availed himself of it to the utmost. More than any 
of us he rose to the magnitude of the occasion and derived 
advantage from the opportunities of a great experience. I 



War and Army Life 155 

have elsewhere expressed my sense of this.* He now by an 
act of extreme friendliness got me out of the most disagree- 
able and trying position in which, on the whole, I ever found 
myself involved, rendering me a service I never adequately 
repaid ; though subsequently I did write his Memoir — forty 
years later, in 1906, for the Proceedings of the Historical 
Society.- It was a somewhat elaborate Memoir also, and 
gave much satisfaction to his widow, an old friend of mine, 
and a grand-daughter of that Jonathan Russell, whom J. Q. 
Adams so victimized somewhere about 1822. The fact was, 
Theodore Lyman realized my position. In my great per- 
plexity I wrote to him, and he explained the situation to 
Meade. So my squadron was by special order detached 
from the regiment and directed to report to the Headquar- 
ters of the Army of the Potomac for escort duty. Taken 
altogether, the most opportune act of friendship ever done 
me, it saved my army life from utter failure; but I did not 
know how to avail myself of my opportunities, and that 
life was not what it should have been. 

Thus, when I returned from England in April, 1864, just 
in time for Grant's awful Wilderness campaign — full of 
doubt and anxiety, determined somehow to get away from 
the regiment — this order had preceded me, and I found my 
squadron already transferred. Only once do I remember 
going back to the regiment. Chamberlain was then in com- 
mand. A large, rough, self-made man, he had been wild and 
adventurous in his youth, serving as a trooper in the Mexican 
war. Wholly lacking in refinement and education, he was a 
dashing fellow in his way; and on the whole, I fancy, the 
best officer that regiment ever had. Knowing his business 

^ z Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xii. 62. » lb., xx. 147. 



1 5 6 Charles Francis Adams 



fairly well, he was more In s}Tnpathy with the men. At 
Kelly's Ford he had the year before been severely wounded 
— two carbine bullets in his face. He was now lieutenant- 
colonel in command ; for the regiment was not full enough 
to permit the mustering in of a full colonel. On my reporting 
back for duty, I saw Chamberlain, and he urged me strongly 
to get myself and the squadron returned to the regiment. 
We sat on the grass there in that dreary Virginia camp, 
discussing the matter, and he then offered me the place next 
himself in command. I, however, was obdurate. I declined 
even to consider the proposition — it involved a daily con- 
tact with the things I loathed. Chamberlain and I then 
parted good friends, and afterwards remained such. He a 
year later succeeded me in command of the Fifth Cavalry, 
at last getting his colonelcy. 

My experience at the Headquarters of the Army of the 
Potomac continued about six months — from April to 
October. The change was great, and a pleasant one. There, 
and there only, did I see some of the large operations of war- 
fare, and find myself in contact with men high in command. 
I went to the Headquarters a perfectly well man; but the 
seeds of malarial disease were, I imagine, implanted, and 
during the summer of 1864 I began slowly to break down. 
I now know well enough what the trouble was. I was poi- 
soned by Incessant feeding on hard-tack and meat freshly 
killed and fried in pork-fat, and the inordinate drinking of 
black coffee — quarts of it, each day. We all did so; we and 
the medical men evincing an equal lack of either knowledge 
of or regard for the most elementary rules of hygiene. My 
present realizing sense of our ignorance and recklessness fills 
me with a sort of disgusted surprise. We seem all round, at 



TVar and Army Life 157 

home as In the army, to have been Httle more than Ignorant 
and unobservant children. This disregard of ordinary pre- 
cautions I stood longer than most, living meanwhile during 
the summer of 1864 on the river-banks of the Appomattox, 
surrounded by decaying animal matter; but, with even the 
most Iron of constitutions, it was only a question of time. 
I began to break down in August, 1864; and, in May, 1865, 
was a mere physical wreck. 

At Headquarters I came in contact with, or had a chance 
in a way to observe, all the men whose names were then 
famous In Army of Potomac circles, from Grant down. Here, 
as everywhere, my lack of savoir-faire — of natural objective- 
ness — my utter deficiency in quick discernment and tact, 
my Inability to avail myself of opportunity, and to do or say 
the right thing at the proper moment — all this, as I now 
see, stood sadly in my way. I did not ingratiate myself to 
the degree that would have been easily possible with one 
differently constituted. At the same time I must confess 
that even now, looking back, the men I saw handling large 
affairs In those military operations do not seem to me to 
have been as a rule imposing. The truth of old Oxenstiern's 
remark forced itself continually on me. General Meade was 
a gentleman and man of high character; but he was Irritable, 
petulant and dyspeptic. He did not give the idea of calm, 
reserved force. Grant did; but Grant was a man of coarse 
fibre, and did not Impress with a sense of character. Hancock 
was a dashing field-marshal; a handsome, superb commander 
of a corps. Warren left on me a sense of lightness. Hum- 
phreys and Sedgwick were the only two generals I ever met 
who inspired me with an adequate sense of force and reli- 
ability. Officers, they were also quiet, unassuming gentlemen. 



158 Charles Francis Adams 

About them there was no pretence, no posing for effect, no 
stage tricks. I felt for them a profound respect; and, could 
I have been a staff officer on the corps commanded by either, 
I should have found my proper army position. Sheridan I 
never saw until long after the war was over, and then only 
casually. He was essentially an Irish adventurer — a species 
of brilliant Charles O'Malley; with a well-developed natural 
aptitude for military life, he was not conspicuous for char- 
acter. Thomas, I never laid eyes on; but I imagine he was 
a man of the Sedgwick type — solid and full of character. 
Sherman, I only saw after the war was over; but he then 
impressed me much, more than any of those I have named, 
not even excepting Humphreys. He bore the stamp of true 
genius. Curiously natural, very fond of talking, there was 
about him nothing of the poseur. He was a delightful dinner- 
table companion, humorous, easy, striking, full of reminis- 
cence. He and Humphreys, very different, but each great, 
were my two army ideals; under either, it would have been 
a delight and glory to serve. This satisfaction did not fall 
to me, partly from that natural obtuseness which has ever 
stood between me and my opportunities, partly from a mis- 
taken adhesion to that narrow sense of obligation and duty 
to which I have made reference, both here and in my Memoir 
of Theodore Lyman. ^ 

I had joined the Headquarters a few days only before the 
opening of Grant's terrible Wilderness campaign. I was then 
in perfect health. I remember well the fine April morning 
when my bugler blew "To Horse" just as Meade mounted, 
and, followed by his staff, headed towards Richmond. He 
did not go far that day; nor for many following days. I was 
^ 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xx. 160. 



JVar and Army Life 159 



with the Headquarters from that time on, until we halted 
before Petersburg, and the long siege of Richmond was well 
advanced. At first, while the army was on its way to the 
James, continually fighting and flanking, I was, owing to 
the entire absence of cavalr>^, frequently called upon for 
difficult and dangerous service. I had to skirmish, scout and 
cover the army's flank under the orders and eye of the com- 
manding general. I did my work fairly well, and when I was 
leaving for another command Meade in a personal letter 
mentioned all the occasions specifically, and kindly com- 
mended my conduct. While the army was in movement, 
therefore, I could not have desired a better position. My 
only trouble was that I did not know how to magnify it. 

Of this very memorable campaign and the impressions it 
left on me at the time, I have little question my letters home 
and to my friends would to-day tell the story so far as I was 
concerned. That would be contemporaneous evidence; but 
speaking of it as reminiscence, I can only say that the gen- 
eral impression left upon me is one of monotonous discour- 
agement. The heroic is not greatly In evidence. Looking 
back, the thing which stands prominently forth, writ very 
large, is my sense of the utter incompetence of Major- 
General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, and the ter- 
rible disasters and loss of life that incompetence directly 
involved. The figure cut by Grouchy in the Waterloo cam- 
paign is heroic and almost innocuous compared with it. On 
this point I have since expressed myself with such force and 
emphasis as I can command. Grant's plan of campaign went 
absolutely to pieces at the very outset because of Butler's 
utter military incapacity, and his inability either to see an 
opportunity, much more to seize it. At the beginning, as I 



i6o Charles Francis Adams 



have shown in my recently published papers, the winning 
card was in his hand, and the fact was pointed out to him 
clearly by his subordinates. He did not know enough to 
recognize it as the winning card, or to play it when pointed 
out to him as such. The military element did not enter in 
any degree into Butler's composition, and the Army of the 
Potomac, including myself, paid the penalty. I think it not 
too much to say that the loss of life and casualties thus 
entailed were to be numbered by the tens of thousands. As 
I remember that awful campaign and those months passed 
in front of Petersburg, I entertain a very bitter feeling to- 
wards Major-General Benjamin F. Butler. Though I never 
saw him while he was in command, yet I was very sensible 
at the time of the disappointment and loss his being in com- 
mand entailed upon us. But I have borne my evidence on 
all these points in print, and on more than one occasion. It 
can be found, if any one is curious enough to look it up, 
in my original paper on Mr. Rhodes's fifth volume, in the 
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,^ in my 
Memoir of Theodore Lyman in the next volume of those 
Proceedings^ and finally, in my published Studies: Military 
and Diplomatic} It is needless here to repeat what I have 
there said. 

But here I would like to refer to a matter which has for 
years been to me a constant annoyance. Never since it was 
there placed have I passed by the front of the State House 
without feeling a sense of wrong and insult at the presence, 
opposite the head of Park Street, of the equestrian statue of 
Hooker. That statue I look upon as an opprobrium cast on 
every genuine Massachusetts man who served in the Civil 

» 2 Proceedings, xix. 348. * lb., xx. 162. ' Pages 267-81. 



TVar and Army Life 1 6 1 

War. Hooker In no way and in no degree represents the 
typical soldiership of the Commonwealth. His record, either 
as an officer or as a man, was not creditable. Chancing to be 
born in Massachusetts, he was in 1861 and from that time 
forward little better than a drunken, West Point military 
adventurer. A showy officer, and one capable of fairly good 
work in a limited command — that of a brigade or division 
— he was altogether devoid of character; insubordinate and 
intriguing when at the head of a corps, as a commander he 
was in nearly every respect lacking. It is true that after 
superseding Burnside he did some effective work towards 
organizing the Army of the Potomac. Nevertheless, that 
was a period in its history when, so far as character was con- 
cerned, the Army of the Potomac sank to its lowest point. 
It was commanded by a trio, of each of whom the least said 
the better. It consisted of "Joe" Hooker, "Dan" Sickles, 
and "Dan" Butterfield. All three were men of blemished 
character. During the winter (1862-63), when Hooker was 
in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experi- 
ence, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac 
was a place to which no self-respecting man liked to go, and 
no decent woman could go. It was a combination of bar- 
room and brothel. Then, as if it was not sufficiently annoy- 
ing to any Massachusetts man who had borne a respectable 
part in the Civil War, it was proposed to erect in front of 
the State House a statue of Butler in addition to that of 
Hooker. This may yet be done. If it is done, I can only hope 
it will not be until after my death. That will be altogether 
too much ! Hooker on one side, and Butler on the other ! — 
two men in connection with neither of whom during the Civil 
War a good word can be said. An equestrian statue of 



1 6 2 Charles Francis Adams 

Charles Lowell would have represented something typical 
of Massachusetts, greatly to the credit of the Common- 
wealth. But Hooker and Butler! — as one who wore the uni- 
form my feeling would be much that of a Frenchman if, in 
the most conspicuous place of Paris, he every day was forced 
to contemplate statues of Grouchy and Bazaine, supposed 
to be representative of the best soldier type France had to 
offer. 

Returning to my individual experience at that time, after 
the army crossed the James in June, 1864, and settled down 
before Petersburg, the whole situation, so far as I was con- 
cerned, became changed. I was no longer called on for special 
duties; I did not move with the staff; I became in fact a mere 
commander of orderlies. Of this I soon wearied. We were, 
too, encamped in low lands, for convenience of access to 
water on account of the horses, and my health for the first 
time manifestly began to fail. I had stood it two years and 
eight months, and my turn had now come. It was a marvel 
it had not come before, and my exemption up to this late 
day spoke volumes for my constitutional strength. But, as I 
look back, I wonder at my own obtuseness. I seem never to 
have taken the trouble to obser\^e or to draw inferences which 
should have been obvious. With a suggestively growing sick- 
list it never occurred to me to change my camp to higher 
ground or dryer soil, to put my men in motion on some pre- 
text, or to alter my own diet. I stupidly blundered along, 
myself sickening day by day. 

In September, the monotony became terrible, and my 
enteric troubles so pronounced that I went into hospital, 
under care of my college friend, E. B. Dalton, then in com- 
mand of the Reserve Hospital of the Army. I shared his tent. 



TVar and Army Life 163 



Of him I cannot speak too highly. He was one of the few 
absolutely iirst-class characters I ever knew. Gentle, manly, 
refined, high-toned, courageous and self-respecting — to be 
his friend was indeed an honor. He must now (191 2) have 
been dead hard upon forty years. His picture still hangs in 
my dressing-room, and I remember hun as a man of the 
loftiest order of character. His later history was awfully and 
dramatically tragic — afflictions rained upon him and broke 
him down. He was one of perhaps a dozen I have known, 
the deaths of whom have left distinct vacancies in my life; 
because of them the world has for me since been appreciably 
poorer. 

Dalton soon saw the gravity of my case, and he advised 
me to go home, and get well. Curiously enough, he did not 
advise me to stop drinking coffee, to eat no fried food, and 
to change my camp. These simple precautions never seemed 
to suggest themselves to our army medical men. The fact 
was my intestines were actually corroded with concentrated 
nourishment. I needed to live on bread, vegetables and tea; 
I did live on pork, coffee, spirits and tainted water. Un- 
doubtedly, also, I was suffering from malarial poison. I 
needed active campaign work; but I was tired of the war 
and of army life. 

At just this time the unsought offer came to me of the 
lieutenant-colonelcy of the Fifth Cavalry, a regiment at the 
head of which was my old Fort Independence friend, Harry 
Russell. I hesitated long; but, at last, determined to accept. 
I did not care for the increased rank, still less for the pay; 
but I was tired of orderly duty; sick, I needed a change, and 
I felt, and felt rightly, that a colored regiment would prove 
an interesting study. I left my old command at Petersburg, 



1 64 Charles Francis Adams 

and never saw it again; in early October, I think it was, I 
joined my new regiment, then not mounted and doing guard 
duty at Point Lookout, Maryland, where was a camp of 
Confederate prisoners of war. Here my disease grew rapidly 
on me. I was now a thoroughly sick man; and, in November, 
I got myself ordered home. I had then been three years away. 
Getting somewhat better, I shortly returned to duty; but 
only to break down again. Before the close of the year I was 
back in Boston. 

This was for me a memorable leave of absence, for, in it, 
I became engaged. I had met the young lady a year before, 
while staying at Newport with my sister, Mrs. Charles Kuhn, 
just before sailing for Europe. Fresh from two whole years 
of army life, I suppose I was then in a susceptible state. In 
any event, I thought I had never met so charming and 
attractive a person as she who, twenty-one months later, 
became my wife. The second daughter of Edward Ogden, 
originally of New York, then living at Newport, I had 
thought much of her during the year which elapsed after my 
flying visit to Newport in January, 1864, and now, invalided 
in Boston, I found myself attracted to Newport. My sister 
had gone to Europe; the Ogdens were in deepest affliction 
over the death of the only son, killed in action in Virginia 
six months before; and I had no excuse for going to Newport. 
I went all the same; and, in less than a week, we were engaged. 
That last sick-leave was thus made a very pleasant as well as 
memorable episode for me. 

Things now came in rapid sequence. The war was mani- 
festly drawing to a close: for the capture of Fort Fisher fol- 
lowed hard on the battle of Nashville; and that seemed a 
mere sequence to Sherman's march to the sea, and the fall of 



TVar and Army Life 1 6 5 

Savannah. During those winter weeks of 1864-65 the flags 
were incessantly displayed in honor of some new victory. 
I was engaged, and in a Newport dreamland. A letter from 
Harry Russell next advised me that he had resigned, and 
that I must take charge of the regiment; and, almost at the 
same time, a message reached me from General Humphreys, 
telling me that he was about to succeed Hancock in command 
of the Second Corps, and inviting me to take the place of 
inspector-general of his command. That was a very intoxi- 
cating period. Patience, and minding my own business had 
carried me through my troubles, and I was rising surface- 
ward, corklike. 

Large and small, I have made many mistakes in my life; 
not more perhaps than the average man, but still a sufficiency 
— mistakes of judgment, mistakes of temper and utterance, 
social mistakes, and, above all, mistakes due to lack of dis- 
cernment. One or two of these, mistakes of judgment, have 
been vital, affecting my whole subsequent course of life; 
mistakes like taking the wrong fork of the road to a destina- 
tion, when it was a mere turn of the hand which road was 
taken. Other of my mistakes, though not vital, were impor- 
tant; matters for life-time regret. Among my half-dozen mis- 
takes of this sort, I now distinctly scored one. Acting, I will 
do myself the justice to say, largely under a sense of obliga- 
tion and duty, I did not hesitate an instant; I elected to 
remain with my regiment. From every point of view I de- 
cided wrong; for I did the regiment no good and myself much 
harm. The whole experience afforded an excellent instance 
of good intentions misdirected. In the first place, by an 
ingenious move through my influential friends at the Head- 
quarters of the Army of the Potomac, I got the regiment 



1 66 Charles Francis Adams 

mounted. Mistake number one. The regiment was doing 
very good service, dismounted, as a garrison and on guard 
over the prisoners' camp at Point Lookout. To mount it, 
meant only the waste of twelve hundred much-needed 
horses. Then, having got it mounted, through the same 
channels I worked it into active service. Mistake number 
two; as the only result of so doing was to afford myself con- 
vincing proof that the negro was wholly unfit for cavalry 
service, lacking absolutely the essential qualities of alertness, 
individuality, reliability and self-reliance. He could not 
scout; he could not take care of himself in unfamiliar posi- 
tions. That regiment was in exactly its proper place at Point 
Lookout. I merely took the negro out of it, and put him 
where he was of no possible use. I did the service harm, the 
regiment no good. As for myself, I sacrificed the whole ripe 
reward and happy culmination of my three years of service. 
True, I had the satisfaction of leading my regiment into 
burning Richmond, the day after Lee abandoned it. I did 
have that satisfaction; and it was a great one. But it was 
purchased at a great cost. And that was all I got. Then 
came a few weeks of wretched breaking down, until I became 
a confirmed invalid, and had to crawl ignominiously home, 
leaving my regiment ordered to Texas and almost in a state 
of mutiny. It was a bitter and humiliating termination of 
nearly four years of faithful effort. And all from a sense of 
duty! And I might have been in at the death with Hum- 
phreys and the Second Corps ! It was all very bitter and so 
wholly unnecessary! 

Forced to be content with the march into Richmond, a 
few weeks later, about the 20th of May, I dragged myself on 
to my horse, and left my command. I was then a mere wreck 



TVar and Army Life 167 



— pitiably reduced and weak. Eaten up with malarial poi- 
son, I weighed scarcely one hundred and thirty pounds, 
while my knees would at night so ache from mere weakness 
that sleep was out of the question. Intestinally corroded, I 
was never free from the influence of opium, which acting on 
my nerves drove me almost to insanity. Weeks later, a short 
sea voyage brought me relief; the physicians were of no use. 
Had they in May prescribed an ocean voyage to Europe and 
back, I would have been convalescent in a month. As it was, 
in June, I think, I was quietly mustered out of the service, 
and became once more a civilian. A great experience was 
over, and its close was for me a Dead Sea apple. But I 
intended it well ! 



V 

PUBLIC SERVICE AND HISTORY 

Passing the summer in Newport, I was married in No- 
vember, and went immediately to Europe. The next eleven 
months I passed — or rather we passed — in London, at 
Rome and Paris, and finally in England, getting back to 
America in the following October (1866). My going to 
Europe was a wise move, for it enabled me to recover my 
health. The process was a slow one, for my system was per- 
meated by disease. I had slowly to work the poison out. I 
much fear I was far from an amiable or considerate husband 
during those twelve months; more especially as I was weighed 
down by the ever-present consciousness that I was now to go 
back to civil life, and, somehow, while earning a living, work 
out my destiny. The outlook was indeed dreary. 

Still, I did enjoy Europe — after a fashion ! That I failed, 
and failed woefully, to avail myself of my opportunities, goes 
without saying; for it was I! My father was then American 
Minister to Great Britain, and, had I possessed the happy, 
ingratiating, social faculty only in a moderate degree, I could 
have seen much I never saw of things, and met many men I 
now have only heard of. It was not so, and I have little to 
record; for at that period I kept no diary. On the Continent, 
it was the same; I failed to avail myself of my opportunities. 
But those were at least the days of the temporal dominion 
of the Pope, and Rome was mediaeval and unique. It had 
not yet been at once modernized and vulgarized. It was old 
Rome, under the Papacy. When we left it, we left it by car- 



Public Service and History 1 6 9 

riage, driving to Perugia. We also drove from Genoa to Nice 
along the famous Cornice Road. France and Paris were very- 
different in 1866 from what they now (19 12) are. It was in 
the days of the Empire; the battle of Sadowa, ominous of the 
fate of Napoleon III, was fought while we were at Paris. I 
am free to confess that, for a foreigner, France of the Sec- 
ond Empire was an infinitely more attractive country than 
France of the Republic. It may have been all sham and tin- 
sel; but Paris was then undeniably brilliant, gay and clean. 
' It is now a cheap caravansary — cheap in everything but its 
prices. It has since grown common. Even the boulevards, 
the theatres, the "gargons," and the police have deteriorated. 
But on this head I expressed myself in full in my Memoir of 
Robert C. Winthrop.i Mutato nomine, etc. 

We got back to America late in September, 1866, and I 
confronted the world, so to speak, face to face. It bore a far 
from inviting aspect. I had been away nearly five entire 
years, and both I and the conditions were greatly changed. 
Married, and thirty years of age, I was to begin anew; and 
at the foot of the ladder. The change was something terrific; 
nor did those around appreciate, I think, how great it was. 
I had been a full colonel, in command of a regiment. Within 
the beat of his sentries there is no one on earth more of 
a despot than a colonel commanding a regiment. He is 
supreme; he breathes a constant atmosphere of deference 
and subordination. This I had been thoroughly accustomed 
to; and, now, I found myself an office-boy — a mere tender- 
out— a confessed applicant for — something ! People, I 
knew well enough and felt keenly, looked at me, half curi- 
ously, half sympathetically, waiting to see what I would find 

' 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xx. 186-89. 



1 7 o Charles Francis Adams 

to do. It was more, far more than merely discouraging — it 
was humiliating. 

I must do myself the justice to say that under these cir- 
cumstances I addressed myself to the ordeal before me, not 
only with a good deal of courage, but promptly and in a large 
way, evincing withal a somewhat surprising degree of good 
sense. Nominally, I found I had to go back to a law office. 
I had no choice. I had to do something; but I did it with a 
sinking heart. I felt I had no aptitude that way. In my case 
people have always been over-ready to talk of "family 
influence" and all that sort of thing in an owlish way, so 
accounting for about everything I ever accomplished. So 
far as I have ever been able to see, however, "family influ- 
ence" never was of any assistance to me; and, in those ordeal 
days, never I am sure was put forth in the faintest in my 
behalf. Paraphrasing Pistol, the world was my oyster then, 
which I with pen did open; and I did it, unaided. 

But, curiously enough, I had meanwhile worked out my 
problem in advance; and worked it out correctly. Surveying 
the whole field — instinctively recognizing my unfitness for 
the law — I fixed on the railroad system as the most develop- 
ing force and largest field of the day, and determined to 
attach myself to it. I now stand amazed at my own inexperi- 
ence and audacity; but, having made up my mind, within a 
fortnight of my dreary home-coming, and, in perfect good 
faith, evolving my facts from my inner consciousness, I pro- 
ceeded to write an article on "Railroads" for the North 
American Review I James Russell Lowell and Charles E. 
Norton were then editing that periodical — trying to in- 
fuse new life into its aged system; for it was being slowly 
but surely crowded out of existence by the newer and more 



Public Service and History 171 



superficial, but also more readable swarm of monthlies then 
coming into vogue. Norton was kind enough to accept my 
suggestion of an article; and, even now, I retain a profoundly 
grateful feeling towards him for that helping hand in an 
hour of submerged distress. I wrote the article — currente 
calamo — at Newport, while wondering what I was going to 
do for a winter shelter; and I hardly consulted a book, while, 
certainly, I knew nothing of my subject. As I think of it, I 
must say I decidedly admire my own energy and directness; 
even if I have to confess to a considerable degree of simple- 
minded assurance. The article appeared — •"judiciously 
edited," I am glad to say, by Norton — in the North Ameri- 
can for April, 1867, and it helped me much. I have not read 
it for over forty years; and I should be somewhat afraid to 
read it now; but then it was a first step; undeniably ill- 
considered and rash, it showed life. 

Meanwhile, trying somehow to catch on to the railroad 
interest, I did make an honest effort at the law. It simply 
would not go! There was something inherently unsympa- 
thetic — antipatica — between it and me. Not only did I 
feel it, but I was conscious, or thought I was conscious of 
the fact, that, somehow, every one else realized it also. I 
never had, to my recollection, a hona-fide client. The whole 
experience was to the last degree humiliating; it may have 
been healthy, but it certainly was not agreeable. 

Again, time, patience and persistent pegging away worked 
a salvation. Fortunately, I had enough to live on in a small 
but sufficiently comfortable way, and the dreary clientless 
months crept on. But my pen was always busy; I wrote 
article on article, almost always on railroads, or railroad law, 
for the North American or the magazines, law and other, and 



1 7 2 Charles Francis Adams 



in that way Identified my name with railroads ; but It was a 
discouraging process. I never seemed to get anywhere; the 
outlook did not brighten. Then, as is wont to be the case, 
day suddenly broke. Up to that time, Massachusetts had 
no department of government specially connected with Its 
growing but still wholly unregulated railroad system. I fixed 
my mind on the great probability of such a department 
being soon created, and determined to try for a place In It. 
In this, I succeeded; nor, as things go In life, did I have long 
to wait. 

It was In October, 1866, that I began operations; In July, 
1869, my purpose was accomplished. An act creating a State 
Board of Railroad Commissioners was passed by the Legis- 
lature, In the spring of 1869, largely through my Instrumen- 
tality; and, making a strike for the position, I was appointed 
the third member of it. I had worked my problem success- 
fully out In two years and nine months; a very creditable 
consummation. 

Again, as in February, 1865, everything, so to speak, flow- 
ered simultaneously, all my long efforts seemed to mature 
together, wholly changing my position at once and perma- 
nently. I at last had my foot firmly on the lower rung of 
the ladder, and was on the way up. My father had returned 
from London In the spring of 1868. Leaving his house in 
Boston, which until then I had occupied, we, In the autumn 
of 1868, established ourselves on the Neponset turnpike, in 
Quincy. It was a wise thing to do; though, at the time, I did 
not so consider it. I went there most reluctantly; but in 
Quincy I was known. There, during that Winter, I with 
Infinite pains, sparing no labor, wrote my Chapter of Erie. 
That showed progress ; it was really a careful piece of llterar}^ 



Public Service and History 1 7 3 



work. In the spring also I was invited by the Grand Army 
Post, at Quincy, to deliver a Fourth of July Address. I 
agreed to do it; and on that, also, I spared no pains. I actu- 
ally memorized it; a thing I could not possibly now do. 
When July came, my nomination as Railroad Commissioner, 
my Fourth of July Address, and the Chapter of Erie all came 
at once, and together. Careful preparation told. The suc- 
cess of each effort was considerable; my chance was secure. 
That Fourth of July, 1869, was, distinctly, one of my life's 
red-letter days. It stands out in memory as such. The pre- 
liminary struggle at last was over; the way was open before 
me. At last I had worked myself into my proper position 
and an environment natural to me. 

I served on the Massachusetts Board of Railroad Com- 
missioners exactly ten years, from July, 1869, to July, 1879; 
for seven of the ten, I was chairman, and for the whole ten 
by common consent the controlling mind of the Board. In 
1879, my fourth commission expired, and I declined a re- 
nomination. I had done all I could do in the position; and, 
so far as I personally was concerned, I had got out of it all 
it had to give. It was time I left, and looked elsewhere. But 
certainly, those ten were prosperous, active, useful years for 
j^e — years good to live, good to look back on. My two 
colleagues on the original commission were very ordinary 
men; both much older than I. But, all the same, they let 
me do nearly all the work of the Board, and write all the 
reports, and the reports were thought well of. When, 
through the chapter of accidents, those two associates were 
retired, I came to the chairmanship, and then my two col- 
leagues — Mr. Briggs, of Springheld, and Mr. Johnson, of 
Newton — were, as associates, all I could ask for. It was a 



174 Charles Francis Adams 

really excellent board, as good as such a board well could be, 
able, honest, perfectly harmonious. It was a very pleasant 
official life; and, as the initial Railroad Commission, the 
success of the Board was pronounced and generally recog- 
nized. 

As for myself, looking back, I think, all things considered, 
I did well. I made some mistakes of judgment, and bad 
mistakes. Frequently, I proved unequal to the occasion. 
More than once, I now see, I was lacking in firmness, and 
even in courage. I did not take the position I should have 
taken. On the other hand, on the one great occasion which 
offered I did prove fully equal to It, and my success then 
more than counterbalanced all my shortcomings elsewhere. 
I refer to our action and report on the strike of engineers on 
the Boston & Maine Railroad, in February, 1877. On that 
occasion our Board rendered a really considerable public 
service, putting a sharp stop to a rapidly increasing epidemic, 
and courageously laying down some very salutary doctrines 
which were productive of lasting effects. That was twenty- 
three years ago (1900) ; and there has not since been a strike 
of railroad train operatives In New England. I wrote the 
whole of the report, at Quincy, during the evening which 
followed the hearings. My associates adopted my draft the 
next day, without the change of a word; It was immediately 
published; and, as a leading member of the Legislature — • 
General Cogswell, of Ipswich — afterwards remarked to me: 
"It cleared the air like a thunderclap." On the action then 
taken, I now (191 2) pride myself. In my judgment great 
and unnecessary friction would have been since avoided and 
Industrial results of the utmost Importance secured had the 
precedent there established been since generally followed. 



Public Service and History 1 7 5 

The appeal in industrial difficulties was to an enlightened 
public opinion, based on facts elicited by a fair-minded 
public investigation. As labor conflicts have since occurred, 
I have repeatedly called attention to that experience and 
precedent; but it was a voice crying in the wilderness. Our 
people as a community do not share in my faith in publicity; 
but, all the same, public opinion and patience are the best 
possible agents for successfully solving industrial, social and 
economical problems. Twenty-five years subsequently (1902) 
I told the story in a paper entitled Investigation and Publicity 
as opposed to Compulsory Arbitration, read before the Ameri- 
can Civic Federation, and then printed by me in pamphlet 
form. The Roosevelt Commission on the Pittsburg Anthra- 
cite Coal Strike of that year formally adopted my views, 
and recommended accordingly; but nothing came of it. 
That action and report of 1877, however, I still hold to have 
been as creditable a piece of work as I ever did ; it was also 
courageous. Perhaps I ought to have followed it up; made 
in fact the following of it up my work in life. Who knows t 
It is a supremely wise man who recognizes his mission when 
the call comes and occasion offers. I certainly have in life 
not been over-wise, much less supremely so. 

On the other hand, not impossibly my turn of thought 
Is too philosophical for practical, every-day purposes; and, 
being so, it fails to make proper allowance for the natural in 
human nature — the desire of the man in the street to get 
things done and, as he imagines, once-and-for-all disposed 
of. Hence, as I see it, the growing tendency to excessive legis- 
lation — to the everlasting issuing of new legislative edicts 
in which the supposed popular will is crystallized and penal- 
ized. For myself, I don't believe in it. I never have believed 



17 6 Charles Francis Adams 



in it; and for this reason, perhaps, have failed to be in sym- 
pathy with the sturdy champions of the "Dear Peepul." 
But, after all, such are but the old-time courtier, the syco- 
phant and the parasite of the Tudor and Stuart periods 
thinly disguised and in a slightly different role; and the lot 
of the man who talks of Reason, Publicity and Patience now 
diifers not greatly from the lot of him who three centuries 
ago questioned Divine Right, or gave open expression to a 
doubt as to the infallibility of the British Solomon. And so 
it goes! The potter's wheel has turned; the clay and the 
potter remain the same. 

So, as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Railroad 
Commissioners, I for ten years consistently and persistently 
preached my doctrine. It, too, proved in the outcome a 
mere phase in a process of development along the old lines. 
A stronger diet is called for; mine is pronounced a Milk-and- 
Water Dispensation. Unquestionably the late Thomas Car- 
lyle would have so denominated and denounced it. Fortu- 
nately, however, the Strong-Arm Policy is restricted in its 
application to the domain of Politics and cannot reach out 
into those of Science, Art, Literature or Medicine. Hence, 
the world does get on ; but, for all I see, industrial contro- 
versies still remain in the old chaotic stage, or a little more 
so; while, as to the so-called transportation abuses, if any 
real progress to more satisfactory conditions has been made, 
a knowledge of the fact has not reached me. Whatever im- 
provement has been secured has been through the operation 
of natural influences and not as a result of legislative edict. 

But my activity during those ten years (i 869-1 879) was 
by no means confined to railroads, or my official duties as a 
commissioner. In other fields I did a great deal of work; and 



Public Service and History 1 7 7 

in my work I took pleasure. I was In every way prosperous; 
successful in business, I was happy at home. They were 
good years — those with me between thirty-four and forty- 
four. I had, in 1870, found myself so well off in a worldly 
way that I projected, and built, on land my father gave me, 
the house on President's Hill in Quincy; where we lived from 
1 87 1 to 1893. Four of my five children were born in that 
house; and in it no death occurred during our occupancy. 
We moved into it, a new house, when my wife was twenty- 
nine and I was thirty-six; we moved out of it, when Quincy, 
ceasing in the way already described to be a town, had 
been metamorphosed into a most commonplace suburban 
municipality; and, as such, was to me no longer bearable. 
We then by a most fortunate cast in the dice of life, changed 
environments, moving into a far better abode in much more 
congenial surroundings. 

Still, in Quincy, for more than a score of years I was very 
active as a worker, and was an influential citizen. My record 
too was creditable. I left a mark on the town government — 
on its schools, on its Public Library, on its Park system. 
I have told the whole story, always leaving out my own 
name and carefully suppressing reference to myself, in the 
third of my Three Episodes of Massachusetts History. So far 
as the producing of results was concerned, I was, also, be- 
tween 1870 and 1890, most fortunately placed. I worked 
with and through my brother, J. Q. Adams. I never was 
sympathetic or popular; he, somehow, was. He was in close 
touch with the people of Quincy; me, they were disposed to 
look at a bit askance. But he and I, In town matters, 
always acted together. I was much the more active-minded; 
he was inclined to indolence. But, when set in motion, pro- 



1 7 8 Charles Francis Adams 

vided he did not encounter too much opposition, he had a 
really remarkable faculty of accomplishing results. He was, 
however, by nature prone to be too easily discouraged. We 
both delighted in town-meeting. Its atmosphere — in the 
olfactory way pretty bad at times — came naturally to us; 
we were bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; and the mass 
of those there knew it and felt it; and, for twenty years, we 
together practically managed Quincy affairs. It was also 
Quincy's golden age. The town-meetings were reduced from 
a mob to a model; the finances were straightened out; the 
school system was reorganized and made famous; the Public 
Library building was erected and endowed; a system of 
Parks was devised and developed; and, finally, Quincy was 
actually freed from debt. The last fact stated is significant 
• — eloquent even. That was under a town government, and in 
largest extent because of my steady urgency. The levy then 
was ten dollars in the thousand of valuation. Now (1912), 
twenty years later under a city government, Quincy has a 
debt of two million dollars and is considering an annual 
levy of twenty-five dollars on the thousand ! Judging by the 
balance-sheets of the respective periods, my brother John 
and I certainly exercised a not unsalutary Influence. 

I have told the story in my Three Episodes, carefully, as 
I have said, suppressing all claim for personal credit. But 
the historic fact is that whatever was then accomplished our 
town owed wholly and exclusively to us ; and, moreover, I do 
not hesitate here to add that, in so far as I was not, as in 
the cases of the Library and Parks, the Immediately active 
force, I was the stimulating spirit. That record of local and 
municipal activity and usefulness is one pleasant to look 
back on. During those twenty years, I was a member of 



Public Service and History 179 

the School Committee, of the Trustees of the PubUc Library, 
a Park Commissioner, and a Conunissioner of the Sinking 
Fund. There never was a time when I was not actively 
engaged in town work; nor was I ever defeated when a can- 
didate for office. I never before reviewed that record; to do 
it now (191 2), after a lapse of twenty years, affords me sat- 
isfaction. It was eminently creditable — far more so than 
I supposed. Out of pure public spirit I did a great deal of 
work, and I did it well; and, though it nowhere so appears, 
the Thomas Crane Library building and the Merrymount 
Park remain in Quincy permanent memorials of that fact. 

In my life I seem to be able to put my finger on two acci- 
dental epoch-marking incidents. One was the coming across 
a certain book at a crucial period of mental development; 
the other was being invited to deliver an occasional address. 
When in England in November, 1865, shortly after my mar- 
riage, I one day chanced upon a copy of John Stuart Mill's 
essay on Auguste Comte, at that time just published. My 
intellectual faculties had then been lying fallow for nearly 
four years, and I was in a most recipient condition; and that 
essay of Mill's revolutionized in a single morning my whole 
mental attitude. I emerged from the theological stage, in 
which I had been nurtured, and passed Into the scientific. 
I had up to that time never even heard of Darwin. Inter 
arma, etc. From reading that compact little volume of 
Mill's at Brighton In November, 1865, I date a changed 
intellectual and moral being. 

The other individually epochal incident occurred eight 
years afterwards. It was curious, and, though commonplace 
enough at the moment, In remote consequences in its way 
dramatic. Wholly unconsciously on my part and with no 



1 8o Charles Francis Adams 



sense of volition, I entered on a path which led far — for me 
very far! Indeed, I then found my vocation — a call had 
come! The incident occurred in 1874, and thirty years later 
I gave in another address ^ delivered at Weymouth a some- 
what autobiographical account of it. It is only needful to 
premise that the James Humphrey referred to was typical of 
the old New England stock. A man then advanced in life, 
plain in dress and aspect, he was very lame — walking always 
with the aid of two canes, one in each hand; but his whole 
presence was somehow suggestive of honest shrewdness. 
The "Judge" was a man of a stamp common enough for- 
merly, but now rarely found within a radius of twenty miles 
of Boston, if not indeed in that region extinct. For example, 
since I went to Lincoln to live in 1893, the type, then fa- 
miiliar enough there, has disappeared — it was the going of 
the Massachusetts village squire, the town-meeting stand-by, 
the traditional moderator and selectman. 

Getting back to my story, the 1904 account of the incident 
was as follows: "Just thirty years ago last spring, on a day 
in April, if my memory serves me right, your old-time select- 
man, James Humphrey — ^ remembered by you as 'Judge' 
Humphrey — called at my office, then in Pemberton Square, 
Boston. Taking a chair by my desk, he next occasioned 
wide-eyed surprise on my part by inviting me, on behalf of 
a committee of the town of Weymouth, to deliver an his- 
torical address at the coming two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the permanent settlement of the place. Recently re- 
turned to civil life from four years of active military service, 
and nominally a lawyer, I was at that time, as chairman of 

^ Weymouth Thirty Years Later, Weymouth Historical Society, no. 3, 115- 
16. 



Public Service and History 1 8 1 

the State Board of Railroad Commissioners, devoting my 
attention to questions connected with the growth and de- 
velopment of transportation. To independent historical in- 
vestigation I had never given a thought. As to Weymouth, 
I very honestly confess I hardly knew where the town so 
called was, much less anything of its story; having a some- 
what vague impression only that my great-grandmother, 
Parson William Smith's daughter, Abigail, had been born 
there, and there lived her girlhood. Such was my surprise, 
I remember, that I suggested to Mr. Humphrey he must be 
acting under a misapprehension, intending to invite some 
other member of my family, possibly my father. He, how- 
ever, at once assured me such was not the case, satisfying 
me finally that, a man sober and in his right mind, he knew 
what he was about, and whom he was talking to. Subse- 
quently, I learned that he did Indeed act as the representa- 
tive of a committee appointed at the last annual Weymouth 
town-meeting; for an explanation of the choice appeared — 
as 'a great-grandson of Abigail (Smith) Adams, a native of 
We3miouth,' I had been selected for the task. Overcoming 
my surprise, I told Mr. Humphrey I would take the matter 
under consideration. Doing so, I finally concluded to ac- 
cept. Though I had not the faintest Idea of it at the time, 
that acceptance marked for me an epoch; I had. In fact, 
come to a turning-point In life. That, instinctively, if some- 
what unadvisedly and blindly, I followed the path thus 
unexpectedly opened has been to me ever since cause of 
gratitude to Weymouth. For thirty years it has led me 
through pastures green and pleasant places. But at the 
moment, so little did I know of the earlier history of Mas- 
sachusetts, I was not aware that any settlement had been 



1 8 2 Charles Francis Adams 

effected hereabouts immediately after that at Plymouth, or 
that the first name of the place was Wessagusset; nor, 
finally, that Thomas Morton had, at about the same time, 
erected the famous May-pole at Merrymount, on the hill 
opposite where I dwelt. Thus the field into which I was 
invited was one wholly new to me, and unwittingly I entered 
on it; but, for once, fortune builded for me better than I 
knew. I began on a study which has since lasted continu- 
ously." 

I prepared that Address, and delivered it on King-Oak 
Hill on the Fourth of July, 1874. The morning of that day 
was propitious, and the meeting, an open-air one, passed off 
well enough. Taken by surprise, I had to convert what was 
meant for a discourse from manuscript into an oral ex tempore 
address, but I acquitted myself fairly; and, after the thing 
was over, went home without attending the other features 
of the occasion. I felt tired, and a storm was plainly gather- 
ing; that afternoon how it did rain! The flood-gates were 
opened. That, and the afternoon rain of the third day at 
Gettysburg, well do I recall them. 

But returning once more to the 1874 performance, the 
historical investigation preliminary thereto interested me; 
and though a somewhat crude and 'prentice-like piece of 
historical work, the address itself brought me a certain de- 
gree of notice as well as credit, leading among other things 
to my election in the following year (1875) as a member 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Step by step, as 
leisure and occasion offered and called, I was led further 
and yet further in the investigation upon which I then 
entered, and it occupied me, on and off, twenty years. It 
was not until November, 1892, that, in my Three Episodes 



Public Service and History 1 8 3 



0/ Massachusetts History, I finished and published the story 
I first got acquainted with while preparing my Address of 
June, 1874. 

Returning to my narrative, the year before this for me 
epochal episode — that is, in 1873 — I was concerned in 
the earliest of the many outside commissions to which I 
have first and last been appointed, and upon which I have 
done some of the work I shall ever do of most lasting value. 
My father-in-law, Edward Ogden, had died in Paris, in 
June, 1872, and his wife — one of the most lovable characters 
I ever knew, affectionate, unselfish and immensely capable — 
had followed her husband suddenly, dying of heart disease 
in the railroad station at Lyons, while on her way from 
Geneva to Paris, in November following. Her three daugh- 
ters had remained in Europe. I thought of going out, to 
arrange certain business matters and bring them home, when 
Governor Washburn suddenly appointed me chairman of a 
commission provided for by the Massachusetts Legislature 
to attend the Vienna Exposition and report thereon. I went 
out in April, and returned in September. My experience was 
pleasant enough, and in a way instructive; though I was 
generally quite unqualified for the task. Of course, as I al- 
ways have, I failed fully to avail myself of my opportunities, 
and the experience left on my own mind a distinct sense of 
self-insufficiency; but, passing all that, it was my supreme 
good fortune on this occasion to have associated with me 
Frank D. Millet, who was appointed Secretary of the Com- 
mission, and met me as such in Vienna. He and I, at a*ny 
rate, were sympathetic. Coming together at once, we re- 
mained together ever after; and until his terrible death 
in the frightful Titanic disaster of April, 19 12. I then gave 



184 Charles Francis Adams 

public expression ^ to the value I put upon his friendship, 
and the more than esteem I felt for him. He was a very rare 
character, and his unaffected friendship I held more than 
the equivalent of a diploma — ■ it was a decoration. Through 
nearly forty years correspondents, we were also in the earlier 
and the better period companions in numerous vacation 
trips. I have had more days on the water with him, in close 
touch with Nature — days of good companionship and keen 
yachting enjoyment, days a delight to look back upon — 
than with all other persons I have ever met put together; 
for Millet was incomparably the most perfect holiday com- 
panion it was ever my fortune to encounter. So I reckon his 
and my chance association that Vienna summer, one of the 
bits of supreme good fortune which in all my life have come 
my way. Millet was one of perhaps a half-dozen In all whose 
going left for me a void and permanent sense of loss not 
again to be made good — and the void and sense of loss thus 
in his case left were the largest and most sensible of all. 

In 1877, I think it was, I was again appointed a member 
of a special conamission created to report a plan for utilizing 
the Troy & Greenfield Railroad — that Hoosac Tunnel ele- 
phant then a problem on the hands of the Commonwealth; 
and I prepared its report. Nothing came of it immediately; 
but that report foreshadowed the course subsequently pur- 
sued. 

Once more, in 1878, I was made the Chairman of the 
Board of Government Directors of the Union Pacific Rail- 
road Company, and, for the first time, visited the Pacific 
Coast. This was through the influence of Carl Schurz, then 
Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes Cabinet. I prepared 
» Art and Progress^ vol. in, no. 9, July, 1912. 



Public Service and History 1 8 5 



the report; but, though at the time it was merely put in the 
Department files, much to me a little later on resulted from 
that experience. 

In 1892 I was appointed chairman of the preliminary and 
advisory commission provided for by the Legislature of 
Massachusetts to devise a system of Parks and Public Res- 
erv^ations in the vicinity of Boston; and, a year later, when, 
to my utter surprise, our recommendations had been ap- 
proved and adopted, I became chairman of the permanent 
commission organized to carry the system we had outlined 
and recommended into effect. I served on this Board until 
June, 1895. I then resigned, feeling that my task was accom- 
plished, and I had best quit betimes. Wholly opposed to the 
policy of rapid growth and what I could not but regard as 
premature development, I found myself powerless to check 
it. I was, in fact, frightened at our success in the work we 
had to do, and the expenditure step by step Involved in It. 
A few years later, however, I again served (1903) as chairman 
of a special commission appointed to apportion the cost of 
maintenance of the system of reservations among the several 
cities and towns responsible therefor. Eleven years had 
elapsed since I first got concerned in the development. My 
connection with it then at last ceased. And yet I greatly 
doubt whether at any period of my life, or in any way, I 
have done work more useful or so permanent in character, 
as that I did in this connection; for I was largely instru- 
mental in saving to the people of Massachusetts the Blue 
Hills and the Middlesex Fells. In one more year the for- 
mer, at least, would have been gone beyond the possibility 
of redemption. The granite-quarry man had obtained a 
footing in It, and the work of exploitation was actually in 



1 86 Charles Francis Adams 



process. The Blue Hills were, so to speak, in my special baili- 
wick — the region of my Three Episodes. To their inclusion 
in the Reservation I especially devoted my efforts. Thus I 
may also not unfairly claim the Blue Hill Park Reservation 
as in part my monument. 

In 1897 I was appointed chairman of a Massachusetts 
commission provided to inquire into the relations between 
street railways and municipalities. In this connection I 
visited Europe, inquiring into systems in use there; and, 
subsequently, prepared the report of that commission also, 
which became the basis of comprehensive general legislation. 

On all these commissions my relations with my colleagues 
and associates were perfectly harmonious, and generally 
more than merely friendly. Never in any case was there se- 
rious friction in any one of them, or any considerable differ- 
ence in our conclusions and recommendations. Uniformly the 
drawing-up of the reports was entrusted to me. It has, there- 
fore, always been a rather curious subject of reflection in my 
mind, how it chanced that in the early days of my army expe- 
rience alone — the period and position in which harmonious 
relations with my superiors were most important — I found 
myself in an utterly impossible position. Still vaguely im- 
pressed with the idea that it must have been largely my fault, 
in subsequent relations of life I have never proved a person 
difficult to get on with. I am, therefore, forced to the con- 
clusion that it was simply a case of infernal bad luck. The 
fault was mine in no respect; and the only possible alterna- 
tive to the course I took would have been an unseemly 
regimental quarrel, followed by my resignation. I could not 
but have come out of the affair irremediably discredited. 
It was better as it was. And yet, looking at it in all coolness 



Public Service and History 1 8 7 

through the vista of fifty years, I am not sure I would not 
now feel better satisfied had I shown myself a fighting man 
of the old duelling school. 

Again, however, returning to my narrative, apart from 
these minor public functions, my trouble all my recent life — 
that is, since I got my foot firmly on the rungs of the ladder 
in July, 1869 — has been a too active mind. I have con- 
tinually attempted too much — always had too many irons 
in the fire. Besides my official and my literary life, for over 
forty years I led a very active business life. I managed a 
variety of considerable interests; was concerned in many 
enterprises. There is an old saying that the unsuccessful 
man is he who is wrong three times out of five; the successful 
man, he who is right in the same proportion. As I now look 
back on experiences stretching through more than a gen- 
eration, my respect for my own judgment is the reverse of 
inflated. I have throughout dealt with large affairs; several 
times, I have made decided successes; but, as a rule, the 
fallibility of my judgment has been noticeable. A few suc- 
cesses, however, more than made good, in my case, almost 
innumerable blunders, the very thought of which is now 
most unpleasant to dwell upon. One great business success 
I did achieve; and it is the only one on which I can fairly 
plume myself. Going into it at its inception, in 1869, I have 
for over forty years been at the head of the Kansas City 
Stock Yards Company, directing its policy and development. 
When I became President, it was a concern of ^100,000 cap- 
ital, earning, perhaps, ^20,000 a year gross. From this I 
stage by stage have built it up, always its President, until 
to-day it is capitalized at above ten millions, and earns 
annually over ^1,200,000 gross. The second largest institu- 



1 8 8 Charles Francis Adams 

tion of the kind in the world in all these years it has missed 
but a single quarterly dividend; and that owing to a cata- 
clysm — the Kaw Valley flood of 1903, which in three days 
swept away at least ^600,000 of the values of enterprises of 
which I was the originator, and in which I was personally 
most largely interested. Financially, it was for me as a brick 
falling on the head as I walked along a familiar street. The 
loss was never recouped. Managed in a broad, liberal spirit, 
the Kansas City yards have been a great public benefit as 
well as a considerable commercial success. The success of 
the company drew down on it, of course, a populistic political 
attack of the most dangerous character about 1907; and 
this too it survived. I take much pride in its record; and 
feel I have a right so to do. That, I did. 

I also early foresaw the future commercial importance, and 
consequent rapid growth, of Kansas City, arguing the propo- 
sition out fairly and from first principles; and I acted on 
my convictions, making there large purchases of real estate. 
Here I reasoned soundly, and acted boldly and with judg- 
ment. One of the enterprises I there organized and had a 
large interest in made in one year twelve dividends of ten 
per cent each (1886), has divided over four hundred per 
cent Qn its capital, and is now (191 2) being closed out. 
Another investment there, long since having reimbursed its 
entire outlay several times over, represents still several-fold 
what I put into it. 

While, therefore, in view of the opportunities I have had 
— the chances that have fallen in my way, not less numerous 
than superb — I have little to pride myself on on the score 
of sagacity or business judgment; yet, considering that my 
real thought has all the time been occupied in other direc- 



Public Service and History 1 8 9 

tions, I cannot accuse myself of any glaring lack of discern- 
ment. The result speaks in a way for itself. In 1878, when 
I had been engaged in my operations for eight years and 
carr}^ing what was for me a heavy load incident to the 
financial collapse of 1873, my liabilities exceeded my as- 
sets, as I then figured their value, by about fifteen thousand 
dollars. In 1879, with the return of the country to a gold 
basis, the tide turned. That thereafter for a season I was 
simply floating with the stream — a piece of flotsam borne 
along by the flooding tide — I realized at the time; but that 
I had in a degree foreseen the tide, and the channel in which 
it would flow, should to a certain extent be put down to my 
credit. On the other hand, I in no degree foresaw the almost 
unprecedented readjustment of values involved in the de- 
monetization of silver, and the subsequent increase in the 
output of gold; and I further plead guilty to the fact that 
I allowed my head to be turned by the rush of my own 
prosperity. The mistakes I then made affected markedly 
the whole tenor as well as ease of my subsequent life — that 
after fifty-five. They turned the current awry. 

On the other hand, looking back, I wonder at my own 
lack of insight and foresight. It seems to have required a 
certain degree of skill on my part to escape the opportunities, 
the great opportunities, fortune flung in my way; as, also, 
a certain perverseness seems to have been necessary to cause 
me to wallow, as it were, into the misadventures in which I 
from time to time involved myself. For instance, a partici- 
pation in the great success of the Calumet and Hecla — the 
bonanza mine on record — was in 1868 almost thrust upon 
me; but I preferred to "invest" in some wretched Michigan 
lumber railroads, which I long ago dropped as hopeless. 



iQo Charles Francis Adams 



None the less, however, I did get through; and got through 
better than I had any right to expect — indeed, successfully, 
as success in such things goes. That, in place of my suffering 
financial shipwreck, it so fell out was the result partly of 
persistence, partly of judgment, largely of luck. 

Indeed, as I approach the end, I am more than a little 
puzzled to account for the instances I have seen of business 
success — • money-getting. It comes from a rather low In- 
stinct. Certainly, so far as my observation goes, it is rarely 
met with in combination with the finer or more interesting 
traits of character. I have known, and known tolerably well, 
a good many "successful" men — "big" financially — men 
famous during the last half-century; and a less interesting 
crowd I do not care to encounter. Not one that I have ever 
known would I care to meet again, either in this w^orld or 
the next; nor is one of them associated in my mind with the 
idea of humor, thought or refinement. A set of mere money- 
/ getters and traders, they were essentially unattractive and 
uninteresting. The fact is that money-getting, like every- 
thing else, calls for a special aptitude and great concentra- 
tion; and for it, I did not have the first in any marked degree, 
while to it I never gave the last. So, in now summing up, I 
may account myself fortunate in having got out of my 
ventures as well as I did. Running at times great risks, I 
emerged, not ruined. 

Taken as a whole, my life has not been the success it 
ought to have been. Where did the fault come in.? I think 
I can put my finger on it. I began with a scheme of life; 
nor was it a bad one. It was to establish myself at fifty; so 
that, after fifty, I would be free to exert myself in such way 
as I might then desire. Life, also, I regarded as a sequence 



Public Service and History 191 

— one thing, accident apart, leading to another. I followed 
this scheme rather successfully, and for a long time. I got 
well under way in 1869, being then thirty-four. I had been 
through my early experiences, nor had they been lacking in 
variety. I had enjoyed college and society, and got a glimpse 
of early professional life; a glimpse of that sufficed! Then 
came the army, an exceptional break. After that, I was 
married at thirty, and, by the time I was thirty-four, I had 
caught the step. At forty-four, I resigned from the railroad 
commissionership, having achieved a success, to become, 
first, the Chairman of the Board of Arbitration of the Trunk 
Line Railroads, and then, immediately afterwards, the Presi- 
dent of the Union Pacific. These were both natural sequences 
from what had preceded. The Trunk Line Arbitration was 
not a success. The time for it had clearly not come. Just 
the right man in the position held by me might possibly 
have worked out very considerable results; but I doubt; 
and, certainly, I was not the man to do it. The whole thing 
depended on Colonel Albert Fink. I was merely his instru- 
ment; and I gravely question whether conditions were at 
that time ripe for a successful development on the lines 
Colonel Fink contemplated. Nevertheless, that I was ten- 
dered, and for three years held the position I then did, w^as 
a sufficient proof of the standing I had attained. Uncon- 
sciously I had now come to the parting of the ways. I knew 
it, thoughtfully pondered it — and took the wrong road! 

In 1882 I became a member of the Board of Direction of 
the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and, in the spring of 
1884, that company found itself in financial trouble. I went 
out to Omaha, with F. L. Ames, to look into its aflfairs; 
and they certainly were then in a shocking bad way. The 



1 9 2 Charles Francis Adams 

concern was threatened with summary proceedings on behalf 
of the United States Government, its service was demoral- 
ized, it had just backed down before its employees in face 
of a threatened strike, and it was on the verge of bankruptcy, 
with a heavy floating debt. Sidney Dillon, then its presi- 
dent, was old, and had lost his nerve. He was involved with 
the company, and alarmed lest he should be compelled to 
suspend. He insisted, therefore, on being relieved. Every- 
thing pointed to me as the person to succeed him. I was at 
once sent on to Washington to avert the threatened action 
of the Government, which would have sent the company 
into the hands of a receiver; and then and there I had my 
first experience in the most hopeless and repulsive work in 
which I ever was engaged — transacting business with the 
United States Government, and trying to accomplish some- 
thing through Congressional action. My initial episode was 
with a prominent member of the United States Senate. This 
Senator is still (19 12) alive, though long retired; he has a 
great reputation for ability, and a certain reputation, some- 
what fly-blown, it is true, for rugged honesty. I can only say 
that I found him an ill-mannered bully, and by all odds 
the most covertly and dangerously corrupt man I ever had 
opportunity and occasion carefully to observe in public life. 
His grudge against the Union Pacific was that it had not 
retained him — he was not, as a counsel, in its pay. While 
he took excellent care of those competing concerns which 
had been wiser in this respect, he never lost an opportunity 
of posing as the fearless antagonist of corporations when the 
Union Pacific came to the front. For that man, on good and 
sufiicient grounds, I entertained a deep dislike. He was dis- 
tinctly dishonest — a senatorial bribe-taker. 



Public Service and History 193 

However, when I went to Washington in May, 1884, to 
look after the Union Pacific interests, I succeeded, after a 
fashion, in effecting a settlement; and, when I got back to 
New York, I was duly made President of the company in 
place of Dillon, resigned. I remained its President sLx and 
a half years, until November, 1890, and of my experience 
in that position, and its outcome, I do not propose to say 
much. I took the position advisedly, and from purely selfish 
considerations. I was then only forty-nine, and ambitious. 
With a good deal of natural confidence in myself, I looked 
upon assuming the management of a great railway system, 
and correctly enough, as the legitimate outcome of what had, 
in my case, gone before. I was simply playing my game to 
a finish. I was not yet fifty, and I did not want to break 
off, and go into retirement, in mid-career. So I assumed 
charge of the Union Pacific, quite regardless of the fact that, 
in so doing, I took the chances heavily against myself; for 
the concern was in bad repute, heavily loaded with obliga- 
tions, odious in the territory it served; and, moreover, 
though I had no realizing sense of the fact, a day of general 
financial reckoning was at hand. 

And yet, with all these chances against me, my scheme, 
so far as my future was concerned, was, as I now see, well- 
conceived, entirely practicable, and even it justified itself in 
the result. Unfortunately for myself, I lacked the clean-cut 
firmness to adhere to it. Had I only done so, I should have 
achieved a great success, and been reputed among the ablest 
men of my time. The trouble was — and a very common 
trouble it is — I did not know when to lay down my hand, 
and leave the game. My original plan was perfectly defined. 
It was to retain the railroad presidency for five years, and 



194 Charles Francis Adams 

then to retire, being at that time fifty-four. My first five 
years in control of the affairs of the company were most 
successful. I got its finances in order; greatly improved the 
service; reestablished its credit; paid off the whole of its 
floating debt; improved its relations with the communities 
it served. I did not, however, succeed in effecting a settle- 
ment between it and the United States Government. Thus, 
when I ought, upon every possible consideration, to have 
resigned the presidency and retired from active manage- 
ment — for I was tired of it and had grown to long for other 
pursuits and more congenial associates — I went lumbering 
on, chasing the ignis fatuus of a government settlement; and, 
at last, absolutely a victim to the duty delusion, laboring 
under the foolish idea that I owed some sort of obligation 
to my company, and that my services could not well be 
spared. I paid the penalty! 

During the last eighteen months of my connection with 
the Union Pacific I was — there is no use denying it, or 
attempting to explain it away — wholly demoralized. I 
hated my position and its duties, and yearned to be free of 
it and from them. My office had become a prison-house. 
Loathing it, I was anxious, involved, hopeless. I had ac- 
cordingly become a plunger; rapidly getting beyond my 
depth. I have nothing to say in extenuation. I displayed 
indecision and weakness — almost as much as Napoleon 
showed in his Russian campaign. Comparing little things 
with big, and a small man with a great one, the one situation 
had become as impossible for me as was the other for him. 
I simply now rode for a fall; nor did I really care when or 
how I got it. Taken altogether, this was, I think, my least 
creditable experience; and certainly that upon which I look 



Public Service and History 195 



back with the most dissatisfaction. Though ultimately I 
purchased my freedom at a great price, it was worth to me 
all it cost; and though I have deeply regretted the folly and 
lack of will-power which got me into such a wretched posi- 
tion, I have never for a moment grudged the price exacted 
of me in leaving it. In the course of my railroad experiences 
I made no friends, apart from those in the Boston direction; 
nor among those I met was there any man whose acquaint- 
ance I valued. They were a coarse, realistic, bargaining 
crowd. 

Railroads, and the railroad connection, thus occupied over 
twenty years of my life; and, when at last, in December, 
1890, 1 got rid of them, it was with a consciousness of failure, 
but a deep breath of relief. I was emancipated; and, from 
that day to this, I have eschewed the subject. I had a sur- 
feit; and the surfeit super-induced disgust. The equivalent 
to a professional life on my part ended, therefore, in Decem- 
ber, 1890; it was then as if, being a lawyer, I had left my 
office, and closed my connection forever with legal affairs 
or problems. But, in my case, that meant merely an appli- 
cation to what had all along been those activities and pur- 
suits which appealed to me — for which I felt a call, and in 
which I found my pleasure. Except when at the head of 
the Union Pacific I had never wholly given them up; and 
even then only at times. I must admit they were rather 
multifarious, those activities, and it does not speak highly 
for my judgment and controlling good sense that I allowed 
myself to be drawn off in so many directions. The fact is, as 
I have just said, not understanding well myself or my own 
limitations, I was cursed with a dangerous mental activity; 
and, physically, I was not less mobile. Accordingly for 



196 Charles Francis Adams 

twenty years and more I was travelling incessantly; a large 
proportion of my nights were passed in sleeping-cars — and, 
curiously enough, I slept more soundly there than at home 
and in my own bed; while, on the intellectual side, an array 
of bound volumes — ten in number — and two volumes of 
occasional newspaper contributions, bear evidence to my 
intellectual restlessness. Creditable in a way, they constitute 
a record in which it is not possible for a man to take any 
considerable or real satisfaction; for it is a record of dissi- 
pation and of quantity rather than one of quality and con- 
centration. But the fact is I worked in the way natural to 
me; and I did take pleasure in my activity. Undoubtedly I 
overdid it at times, and life was made temporarily some- 
what of a burden; but the thing never ran Into a dangerous 
excess. 

The two forms of activity, the professional and the extra- 
professional, that which I carried on for the enjoyment and 
satisfaction, or interest, I got out of it or felt in it, ran along 
side by side. The professional life began in July, 1869, and 
ended, abruptly, in December, 1890. The extra-professional 
life — business, political, educational and literary — began 
earlier — about 1868 — and is not yet (1912) closed. It ran 
in many directions, naturally, under the circumstances, ac- 
complishing large results in none. My Chapter of Erie was 
published in July, 1869. In the years that immediately fol- 
lowed I got interested In historical and educational work, as 
my Weymouth Address (1874) and my papers on the Quincy 
School System bore evidence. In 1875, I was elected a mem- 
ber of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a recognition 
which I at the time took somewhat lightly, but which after- 
wards implied much. All through those years I was, in- 



Public Service and History 197 

stinctively but unconsciously, gravitating to my vocation; 
for I was engaged at odd moments — as a recreation and 
because I liked it — in historical research. The local records 
and traditions of the region in which I lived had an attrac- 
tion for me, I found a real and great fascination in re-creat- 
ing the past — the Wessagusset settlement at Weymouth, 
"Tom" Morton and his May-pole, at Merrymount, John 
Wheelwright and his Chapel of Ease, in Braintree, the early 
settlement and church, the highways, the training-field, the 
town-meetings and the schools. Out of this I got enjoyment; 
and, now, I feel a sense of satisfaction in having put on 
permanent record the past of that region. That, I did; and 
the record is there, and will remain. It may not be great, 
and certainly has not, nor will it obtain a recognized place 
in general literature; but, locally, it is a classic; and, when 
you come to classics, "local" and "world" are relative 
terms. The great reading public never took note of my 
Three Episodes; but in the Quincy community, it will be 
more read as time goes on. Even two centuries hence it will 
there be referred to and quoted. In 1880 this work was 
practically completed. Between that year and 1884, I was 
very active. It was a period of intermission. I delivered the 
Phi Beta Kappa oration — A College Fetich; I edited the 
New English Canaan; I wrote the Sir Christopher Gardiner. 
I was on the verge of my vocation. It was a fruitful and 
satisfactory period. My privately printed volume, Episodes 
in New England History, bears the date 1883; and I recall 
the enjoyment with which, in the comparative leisure and 
quiet repose of Quincy, I then put those pages through the 
press. Nearly seven years of waste followed — the years 
devoted to the Union Pacific — and, during them, I had 



198 Charles Francis Adams 

small leisure for historical investigation. Those years I 
passed in my office, largely in the society of stenographers. 
But in June, 1882, I was chosen one of the Board of Over- 
seers of Harvard University, and on that Board, and a very 
active worker on it, continued through four terms of six 
years each; and my papers and reports on the English De- 
partment, representing a really large amount of work, were 
not without results of a more or less permanent character. 

In 1890 I was at last thrown forcibly out of the utterly 
false position from which, I am obliged to confess, I did not 
have the will-power to extricate myself. Ejected by Jay 
Gould from the presidency of the Union Pacific, I at last, 
and instantly, fell back on my proper vocation. I was then 
fifty-five; but it was not too late. Though forced back into 
it by a kindly Providence, my scheme of life was being 
carried out with a greater degree of consistency than is 
usual with life-schemes. In spite of myself, I was working a 
way out. Disgust and discontent for and with my position 
had already produced results; and, for more than a year 
previous to my railroad downfall, I had been occupied with 
my biography of R. H. Dana. When the blessed crisis came, 
and the catastrophe occurred, the book was ready for pub- 
lication. Somewhere in my Memorabilia I remember philoso- 
phizing over the fact — it was literally on two successive 
days that I ceased to be a railroad man and appeared as 
an author. A case of out of the darkness and into the light 
— it could not have been better arranged ! 

Finding my calling in December, 1890, I should then 
have been in good time to achieve such results in it as I was 
capable of, had it not been for the awful and inexcusable 
plunging of which I had been guilty during my final period 



Public Service and History \ 9 9 

of demoralization, towards the close of my business activity. 
I only just escaped utter shipwreck. It was in May, 1893, 
that the long-impending, plainly gathering financial storm 
broke — the most deep-seated and far-reaching in the his- 
tory of the countr>\ That I, placed as I then was, could 
have avoided it, would not have been possible. My whole 
scheme of life, and theory of the material situation and 
course of development of the country made it impossible. 
It was something of which I had no preconception — a re- 
adjustment necessitated by a change in the measures of 
value, a change such as had never occurred before. One 
of the precious metals was demonetized. For anything so 
world-wide and far-reaching, I was not prepared. I had 
always looked forward to a depreciation of values, especially 
in real estate; and for that I had made some degree of prepa- 
ration; but I had not expected to see the bottom tumble 
out, and values become purely nominal. This, however, was 
what happened. As the spokesman of Tennyson's Maud 
expressed it, "a vast speculation had fail'd," and I had 
excellent cause to "mutter" and "madden" as the "flying 
gold" of a series of autumns "drove thro' the air." When 
in those June days of 1893 the collapse came, I was then 
carrying a large amount of sail — far more than was pru- 
dent; for, my head turned by long and considerable success, 
I had become reckless. But, after my sudden railroad de- 
thronement, to reduce sail was impossible; and, at the same 
time, I had to assume hea\y additional burdens on account 
of liabilities I had incautiously entered upon on account of 
the Union Pacific; but which now I had to shoulder myself. 
Thus, with much canvas spread, I was loaded down with a 
cargo I had never intended to take on. 



2 00 Charles Francis Adams 

The storm broke! There was the misadventure of my life. 
I was fifty-eight when the crash came. The fury of the 
gale was weathered; but its results were felt continuously 
through five long, precious years. They were for me years 
of simple Hell — years during which I had to throw every- 
thing aside, and devote myself to rehabilitating a wreck. 
It made no sort of diff"erence that the wreck was the result 
of my own improvidence; there it was right under me, and 
the question of again reaching a port was the only one to 
consider. The dislocation this event caused — coming just 
when it did — • shattered my whole scheme of life. Breaking 
in upon it, it broke it up. I was sixty-three years old, and 
a tired man, when at last the effects of the 1893 convulsion 
wore themselves out, and my mind was once more at ease 
so that I could return to my calling. 

The mercury in the financial barometer touched its lowest 
point in the spring and summer of 1897 — the dead ebb of 
a tide steadily receding through four entire years. That 
winter we had passed at Florence, living, not unpleasantly, 
in a villa there — the Boutilene — I immersed in my father's 
diary and papers, and a very elaborate report I was drawing 
up as head of a committee of Overseers on written English 
at Harvard. I had an immense mass of material on this 
topic to work up; and I fear it was to a large extent a dis- 
sipation of force. At any rate, I cannot now — fifteen years 
later — see that any perceptible effect was produced — 
nothing appreciable; but I suppose it all went into the grand 
result, and is present somewhere. The University, however, 
I must say I found a hard and distinctly ungrateful subject 
on which to expend force. I was at it, on and off, and with 
a fair degree of steadiness, through twenty-five years, and 



Public Service and History 201 

I might, I now think, have been more profitably employed. 
However, on that point I am on record; for, when my fourth 
term as Overseer came to a close in 1906, I said my say in 
the Columbia Phi Beta Kappa address Some Modern College 
Tendencies, and, so far as I am concerned, that tells the 
story. The world is very full of institutions calling loudly 
for a readjustment to bring about conformity with changed 
conditions — changed socially, morally, politically, finan- 
cially, materially and, above all, educationally — and, of 
these institutions Harvard College — and, note — I say 
College and not University — is, to my mind, distinctly 
one. Indeed, I would say of it as Hamlet of Denmark, the 
world's a prison — "a goodly one, in which there are many 
confines, wards and dungeons; Harvard being one o' the 
worst." Like Gertrude's married life, it, in my judgment, 
needs to be reformed altogether. But this is a digression. 
My evidence as respects Harv-ard is on record in the little 
volume entitled Three Phi Beta Kappa Addresses (pp. 134- 
47) ; and I refer to the matter now only in connection with 
what was for me an episode occupying much time and 
thought on my part through twenty-five years. 

Recurring to 1897, the tide, as I have said, then turned; 
the young flood began to make its influence felt. But it 
was still a very anxious period; the movement was slow, 
and I had reached the climacteric — I was in my 63 d year. 
So, as my record shortly after (1900) made still tells, I took 
up the broken thread, conning to myself as I did so the 
lines from Tennyson's Ulysses, since college days a favorite 
among poems : 

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' 
We are not now that strength which in old days 



2 o 2 Charles Francis Adams 

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; 
One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

That, and these other lines from Browning's Paracelsus, 
since 1853 a favorite: 

I will fight the battle out; a little spent 
Perhaps, but still an able combatant. 

Meanwhile the great disturbance of that long and troubled 
period had been productive of two memorable changes in 
my way of life. I left Quincy and gave up my winter resi- 
dence in Boston; in the closing days of 1893 I moved from 
Quincy to Lincoln, there thenceforth making my home, and 
a dozen years later (1905) I bought a house in Washington 
and fixed our winter abiding-place. In both cases, at the 
time of making it a wrench and a severe one, each proved a 
blessing in the end. The worst wrench, and by far the most 
painful one, was in the case of Quincy. That was awful! 
Quincy was bone of my bone — flesh of the Adams flesh. 
There I had lived vicariously or in person since 1640; there 
on my return from the war I had made my home, and 
later (1870) built my house; there I had fought my fight, 
not unsuccessfully, through the best years of life; there my 
children were bom; in fact, I felt as if I owned the town, 
for every part of it was familiar to me, and it was I who had 
recounted its history. I felt about it exactly as Hawthorne 
felt about Salem. In his inimitable introductory chapter to 
the Scarlet Letter, he says: "This old town — my native 
place [I, by the way, was born not in Quincy but in Boston; 
but Quincy, none the less, ought to have been my birthplace, 
as it was my race-place] though I have dwelt much away 



Public Service and History 203 

from it, both in boyhood and mature years — possesses, or 
did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of which I 
have never reaUzed during my seasons of actual residence 
there. ... It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since 
the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made 
his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement, 
which has since become a city. And here his descendants 
have been born and died, and have mingled their earthy 
substance with the soil; until no small portion of it must 
necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a 
little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the at- 
tachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy 
of dust for dust. ... So has it been in my case. I felt it 
almost as a destiny to make Salem my home. . . . Never- 
theless, this very sentiment is evidence that the connection, 
which has become an unhealthy one, should at least be sev- 
ered. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a po- 
tato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of 
generations, in the same worn-out soil." 

It was in my case much as Hawthorne here describes in 
his; and so it came about that the storm and stress of 1893 
— and it was an awful storm, and a period for me as for 
many others of severest stress — the storm and stress of 
1893, I say, in the matter of my continuing at Quincy, 
only precipitated the inevitable. It simply had to come; 
nor had I failed to realize the fact. 

During the spring of 1893 I had accordingly taken the 
preliminary steps, and, when the financial troubles broke 
out, what had been before merely contemplated became a 
condition to be immediately dealt with. In May, just before 
the 1893 crisis came, by great good luck I had committed 



2 04 Charles Francis Adams 

myself to the purchase of the place at Lincoln where I have 
since lived, intending to occupy it at some indefinite, if not 
remote, future time when Quincy should have become im- 
possible. Then came the crash, necessitating immediate 
action; and this I took. Early one Monday morning in the 
latter part of November, 1893, I mounted my horse at the 
door of my house on the hill at Quincy — the sun being 
hardly above the horizon of the distant sea-line in the nip- 
ping atmosphere — and rode over to Lincoln. I have not 
passed a night at Quincy since. 

As things resulted, the change was timely and most for- 
tunate. I have never seen occasion to regret it; and, long 
since, the place on President's Hill, on which I dwelt, and 
the development of which between the years 1870 and 1893 
was one of the leading interests of my life, passed into other 
hands. It has been cut up, and "improved," as the expres- 
sion goes, by the building of well-nigh innumerable houses. 
I have never set foot on President's Hill since 1895, when I 
parted with the property. I never mean to again. The 
Quincy I knew has ceased to exist; and, with the present 
Quincy, I have neither ties nor sympathy. In fact, I never 
now go there without, as I come away, drawing a breath of 
deep relief. When I enter it, I seem going into a tomb ; when 
I leave it, getting back to Lincoln, it is a return to the sun- 
light and living air. 

As to Boston, as a place in which to live and have one's 
being, it is much the same. There, however, I passed my 
winters from '84 to '96, building and occupying the house 
at the corner of Gloucester Street and Commonwealth 
Avenue. As a place for social life, long before I parted with 
my house in 1896 the resources were exhausted. When I 



Public Service and History 205 



first went back to Boston as a winter residence in 1884, It 
was enjoyable enough, and made more so by my official 
connection with the Massachusetts Historical Society. As 
time passed, however, I was made to realize that my whole 
Boston social existence consisted of the annual exchange of 
dinners with a rather narrow circle, rapidly changing and 
perceptibly contracting. This is the trouble with Boston — 
it Is provincial. Including Cambridge, one finds there what 
might be called a very good society stock company — an 
exceptional number, In fact, of agreeable people, Intimate 
acquaintance with whom Is rarely formed except in youth, 
unless subsequently by chance encounter in Europe. When 
thus casually met, they are apt to emerge from their social 
shells In curiously attractive shapes and phases. Socially, 
however, the trouble with Boston Is that there is no current 
of fresh outside life everlastingly flowing In and passing out. 
It is, so to speak, stationary — a world, a Boston world, 
unto Itself; and, like all things stationary, there Is In it, as 
the years pass, a very perceptible lack of that variety and 
change which are the essence and spice of life; It tends to 
stagnate. I, accordingly, rate It as one of the fortunate ac- 
cidents of my life that the long and disheartening financial 
depression which followed the crisis of 1893 finally decided 
me. If Indeed It did not seem to compel me, to dispose of my 
Conmionwealth Avenue house, and sever my residence con- 
nection with Boston. The winter climate of Boston Is dis- 
tinctly Arctic, and society life, from sympathy, perhaps, 
seems then to pass through a long period of cold storage. 

Nevertheless, the change of life, whether from summers at 
Quincy or winters in Boston, has seriously aff"ected continu- 
ous and successful application to the task I for years have 



2o6 Charles Francis Adams 

had In hand. That is the working up of raw material of 
history — of the papers, etc., of my father. My plan of a 
magnum opus was to write what would have been a diplo- 
matic history of the Civil War. A rough draft of this I com- 
pleted some ten years ago (1890), and since then it has re- 
mained unfinished. During the intervening time I have been 
absorbed in other things, largely correspondence, and the 
preparation of numerous papers for the Historical Society, 
all of which appear in its Proceedings. Incidentally, the work 
thus done at times related to incidents and episodes con- 
nected with my chief subject. These, however, though pre- 
liminary " Studies," have never been worked up into a con- 
tinuous narrative. In the mean time what in this way I 
have been able to do has undergone incessant interruption, 
through literary forays and excursions — demands on me to 
prepare "occasional" addresses, etc., etc. Of work of this 
sort I have done altogether too much; and, looking back on 
It, it seems to have been singularly resultless and barren. 
Indeed, of all these performances, involving an immense 
amount of labor, there is but one I recall with pure gratifi- 
cation. This was the address entitled Lee''s Centennial^ de- 
livered before the Washington and Lee University at Lex- 
ington, Virginia, on the 19th of January, 1907. In every 
way satisfactory, that occasion and effort left no bitter 
after-taste lurking in the mouth. I had then been in Europe, 
and it was on my return that I received the invitation. My 
selection was, for obvious reasons which at once suggest 
themselves, a very pronounced compliment, due to the 
memory, on the part of those composing the faculty of 
Washington and Lee, of an address I had delivered five years 
previously, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the Uni- 



Public Service and History 207 

versity of Chicago — an address entitled Shall Cromwell 
have a Statue ? The eadier address can be found in the little 
volume published by me in 1907, entitled Three Phi Beta 
Kappa Addresses — the other two being A College Fetich, 
delivered before the Harvard chapter in 1883, and that to 
which I have just referred, entitled Some Modern College 
Tendencies before the Columbia chapter in 1906. The ad- 
dress I am now referring \.o~ Lee's Centennial — msiy be 
found printed in its final form, in the volume of my Studies: 
Military and Diplomatic, published in 191 1. 

As I have just said, t\iQ Lee's Centennial is my one effort in 
that line which I now regard as having been somewhat 
better than a mere waste of time and force. Indeed, from 
the literary point of view, I should put it in the forefront 
of anything I may have done. When I first received the 
invitation, I gave it scant consideration. As respects General 
Lee, the risk incurred by an acceptance loomed in my case 
large. I at once, therefore, wrote, stating that it would not 
be in my power to accept. Shortly after, I received another 
and more urgent letter from President Denny, of Washington 
and Lee, begging me to reconsider my determination, and 
expressing in warm language the desire of all concerned that 
I should undertake the task, and the disappointment that 
would be felt should I decline so to do. I then, with great 
reluctance, came to the conclusion that for me, with my 
family connection with Massachusetts, and the relations 
Massachusetts and Virginia had from first to last borne 
with each other — for me, I say, to decline a second time an 
mvitation thus emphasized, would be distinctly ungracious. 
I felt I had to accept, and do the best I could; and take my 
chances. I accordingly did so. And that I did so has ever 



2o8 Charles Francis Adams 

since been for me one of the pleasant things in Hfe to look 
back on. I went to Virginia, accompanied by my friend 
F. D. Millet, in the following January, and there, on Satur- 
day, the 19th of the month, delivered my address, standing 
on the platform of the College Chapel with Lee's tomb, and 
recumbent image upon it, directly behind me. As I have 
said, the occasion was in every way a success, and consti- 
tuted a very grateful incident in life — good and altogether 
pleasant to look back on. It was not marred, as I after- 
wards realized, by a single untoward incident. The weather 
was perfect; my audience was packed and sympathetic; and 
what I offered was received with a warmth of applause 
which I have never elsewhere or on any other occasion had 
equalled. Most of all, I gratified a large number of most 
excellent people. Altogether pleasant at the time, it was in 
retrospect an occasion yet more pleasant. 

The story of my life is told — here and in the pages of my 
Memorabilia. I became a Vice-President of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society in April, 1890, with a view to succeed- 
ing old George E. Ellis in the Presidency. My consent was 
not asked; nor did I think it a matter of sufficient importance 
to decline the position. I just drifted. In 1895 I became its 
President, and am so still (19 12). 

Finally, I want to say that preparing this resume has been 
for me a decidedly profitable use of time. It has caused me 
to review, to weigh and to measure. As a result of that pro- 
cess, I feel I have no cause of complaint with the world. I 
have been a remarkably, an exceptionally, fortunate man. 
I have had health, absence of death, of dissipation and worth- 
lessness in my family, with no overwhelming calamity to face 



Public Service and History 209 

and subside under; and the world has taken me for all I was 
fairly worth. Looking back, and above all, in reading that 
destroyed diary of mine, I see with tolerable clearness my 
own limitations. I was by no means what I in youth sup- 
posed myself to be. As to opportunity, mine seems to have 
been infinite. No man could ask for better chances. In a lit- 
erary way, financially, politically, I might have been any- 
thing, had being it only been in me. The capacity, not the 
occasion, has been wanting. It was so in the army; it was so 
in railroads, in politics and in business; it was so in literature 
and history. In one and all my limitations made themselves 
felt; most of all, in the Law. On the other hand my abilities, 
as ability goes in this world, have been considerable; never 
first-rate, but more than respectable. They have enabled me 
to accomplish what I have accomplished; and I have accom- 
plished something. 

Six years ago, on its fiftieth year from graduation, my 
class delegated me to speak for them at the Commencement 
dinner. I did so, and then gave expression to something 
autobiographic in a way, and from which now I am not 
disposed greatly to dissent. I had said that Dr. Jacob 
Bigelow, of the class of 1806, whom, I well remembered, had 
in his life accomplished the greatest feat given any man to 
accomplish, in that he left his chosen calling other and better 
than he found it — elevated through him. And I then went 
on : " So now, looking back over these fifty years — their vic- 
tories and their defeats, their accomplishments and their fail- 
ures to accomplish — I have of late often thought how I would 
have had it go could I have shaped events in my own case 
so as now to please me most. As the shadows grow long, 
the forms things assume are very different from those once 



2 1 o Charles Francis Adams 



imagined. The dreams of ambition are transformed. It so 
chances I have had to do with varied callings; but now, 
looking back, I find I would not have greatly cared for su- 
preme professional success, to have been a great physician, 
or divine, or judge. I served in the army once; but military 
rank and fame now seem to me a little empty. As to politics, 
it is a game; art, science, literature — we know how fashions 
change! None of the prizes to be won in those fields now 
tempt me greatly; nor do I feel much regret at my failure 
to win them. What I now find I would really have liked 
is something quite different. I would like to have accumu- 
lated — and ample and frequent opportunity for so doing 
was offered me — one of those vast fortunes of the present 
day rising up into the tens and scores of millions — what is 
vulgarly known as * money to burn.' But I do not want it for 
myself; for my personal needs I have all I crave, and for my 
children I know, without being reminded of the fact, that 
excessive wealth is a curse. What I would now like the sur- 
plus tens of millions for would be to give them to Harvard. 
Could I then at this moment — and I say it reflectively — 
select for myself the result of the life I have lived which I 
would most desire, it would be to find myself in position to 
use my remaining years in perfecting, and developing to an 
equality with all modern requirements the institution John 
Harvard founded. I would like to be the nineteenth-century 
John Harvard — the John Harvard-of-the-Money-Bags, if 
you will. I would rather be that than be Historian or 
General or President." To be this, and to do this, was not 
given to me. In other directions also I have, perhaps, accom- 
plished nothing considerable, compared with what my three 
immediate ancestors accomplished; but, on the other hand, 



Public Service and History 



211 



I have done some things better than they ever did ; and, what 
is more and most of all, I have had a much better time in 
life — got more enjoyment out of it. In this respect I would 
not change with any of them. 

As long ago as my college days I came across the closet 
memorandum of the Calif Abdalrahman, in Gibbon's Decline 
and Fall, and it made an impression upon me — an impres- 
sion so deep, that, since, I have not wearied of referring 
to it. It is in Gibbon's fifty-second chapter, and reads as 
follows: "I have now reigned above fifty years in victory 
or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, 
and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and 
pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly 
blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this 
situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and 
genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount 
to Fourteen: — O man! place not thy confidence in this 
present world!" I cannot undertake to number my days of 
"pure and genuine happiness"; and such days vary greatly 
with mortals. Obviously, they are a matter largely of indi- 
vidual disposition and temperament, much affected in their 
greater or less frequency by the very commonplace factor 
of digestion, or the presence or absence in one's system of 
uric acid. Were I, however, to undertake, in my own case, 
to guess whether the number of those days had been more 
or less than "fourteen," I might hesitate in so doing; but, 
more or less, I am very confident they exceed in number 
those of any one of my forbears. 

Finished, at Washington, Wednesday, March 27, 1912; 
8.45 A.M. 



212 



Charles Francis Adams 



The story of the last years is soon told. Much occupied 
by a desire to complete the Lije of his father, which had been 
begun more than fifteen years before, and was practically in 
definite shape up to the time of his appointment as United 
States Minister to Great Britain, Mr. Adams seriously bent 
himself to preparing this, the most important, portion of 
the work. A series of preliminary studies on the more 
vital incidents of the father's service in England was pre- 
pared and printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society. The Trent Afair appeared in November, 
1912,^ with a number of letters and papers drawn from the 
papers of Charles Francis Adams, Sr.; and the Negotiation 
of 1861 relating to the Declaratio7i of Paris of 18^6, in October, 
1914.^ Seward's foreign policy was described more at large, 
and in doing this Mr. Adams came, somewhat reluctantly, 
to the conclusion that his earlier estimate of Seward's 
measure for the situation in which he was placed required 
some modification not favorable to the Secretary of State. 
The reluctance arose from Seward's known admiration for 
and open imitation of the grandfather, John Quincy Adams, 
and from his long friendship for the father, Charles Francis 
Adams. The deeper he went in his investigation of this 
period the stronger became his conviction that no relation 
would be complete or even satisfactory without a knowledge 
of what the records, public and private, in England and 
France contained. Never having approached such an inves- 
tigation of the foreign or European side of the questions in- 
volved in his father's diplomatic career, he came to realize 
that in spite of the abundance of material collected from 
American sources the story would be told in a one-sided 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlv. 35-148. ^ lb., XLVI. 23-81. 



Public Service and History 2 1 3 



and partial manner. The broader aspects, and the full 
extent of the great victories won in England by his father, 
could only be developed by a study of the documents in the 
foreign office archives and in the carefully guarded private 
correspondence of ministers of foreign affairs and their agents 
in France and Great Britain. Without such a study he felt 
that the accomplishment of his task could result only in a 
conclusion unsatisfying to his own ideas of the possible 
and inherently defective from the standpoint of history. In 
printing the lives and correspondence of their public char- 
acters Englishmen passed over the American connection as 
of secondary interest, giving only a glimpse of what a col- 
lection contained on American questions. It was to develop 
this wealth that Mr. Adams desired to go abroad. 

An opportunity came to accomplish in part this desire. 
Invited to deliver a course of lectures on American institu- 
tions at Oxford University, in succession to Mr. James Ford 
Rhodes, he accepted and sailed for England in March, 191 3. 
He has given an account of his experience at Oxford, and 
the impressions left upon his mind by that experience. The 
conferences then being held in London on the situation in 
the Balkan States naturally overshadowed all other political 
interests. They emphasized the fact that historically Great 
Britain turned towards the East, and the history of America 
was not looked upon as a profitable field for study.^ He 
framed his four lectures to meet this condition, selecting 
certain dramatic features in the War of Secession which 
might awaken interest and further investigation. He wished 
to "impress such as may study my Oxford course with a 
sense not only of the importance of our American history in 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVi. 435. 



2 14 Charles Francis Adams 

connection with that of Europe, but of the far-reaching 
world-wide influence it both has exerted and is hereafter 
destined to exert, from which Great Britain as a community 
has perhaps not least of all been exempt." This resulted in 
a volume containing the lectures in a somewhat expanded 
form. Transatlantic Historical Solidarity (Clarendon Press, 
1913), and a renewal of his association with many of his 
English friends and correspondents. 

In the second object of his journey he attained a great, 
yet, as it seemed to him, a partial success. To break through 
strict regulations, and to enjoy privileges refused to all 
others, offered no mean difficulties in a land where bureau 
methods prevail. But Mr. Adams had a special right as well 
as reason in his favor, and this was recognized by the state 
officials. With courtesy his application for access to special 
records was considered, and with generosity the rules were 
suspended. The Public Records, however, contained only a 
part of what was necessary; for it has long been the practice 
in the British diplomatic service to employ a private or 
personal correspondence between the ambassador and the 
Foreign Secretary in addition to the official dispatches. The 
greater freedom employed in this personal correspondence 
gives it a distinct historical value, for it includes many 
rumors, interpretations, conversations and incidents, trivial 
at the time, but later of value in illustrating characters and 
influences. These letters are looked upon as personal to the 
Foreign Secretary, and do not become part of the official 
records. To secure access to family papers of so recent a 
period offered even greater difficulties than to obtain privi- 
leges in the public records. The first approach, however, 
was fortunate. Hon. Rollo Russell, son of Earl Russell, the 



/ 



Public Service and History 2 1 5 



holder of the Russell Papers, met his request with singular 
generosity; not only showing great interest in his under- 
taking, but placing at his disposal whatever in the Russell 
Papers could serve his purpose. An examination of the 
American correspondence proved the richness of the ma- 
terial. 

Returning to the United States in June, Mr. Adams, on 
receiving a part of the Russell transcripts, saw more clearly 
than ever that his English researches must be extended, so 
as to include other collections like that of Earl Russell. He 
determined upon a second visit to England, and in August 
was again in London. He had in mind also locating hitherto 
unknown Winthrop material, in view of the Society's pro- 
posed re-issue of the History. The search, no longer confined 
to London, took him far afield, and he visited many houses 
where papers were to be found, going twice over the Win- 
throp region in the neighborhood of Groton. He had the 
aid of friends, like Viscount Bryce, who were thoroughly in 
sy-mpathy with his objects, and everywhere he was success- 
ful in overcoming the reticence natural to possessors of 
papers believed still to possess diplomatic possibilities. A 
welcome guest, rarely informed on public questions, and 
vital in his opinions, his tact, social qualities and intelligent 
inquiries were recognized, and his success should offer at 
least some moderation of the severe self-judgment he records 
in this "autobiography." 

He visited Hardwick House, where his host, Mr. George 
Milner-Gibson Cullom, told him of traces of Winthrop ma- 
terial, and gave him the opportunity to meet the Suffolk 
Archaeological Society, then assembled for one of its historical 
pilgrimages. There resulted the appeal sent out to that 



2 1 6 Charles Francis Adams 

Society for aid in the Winthrop problems.^ Oxford Univer- 
sity conferred upon him the degree of Litt.D. He renewed 
his friendly relations with Hon. Rollo Russell, who again 
gave him what he wanted from his father's papers.^ One 
after another of the more important collections were thrown 
open to him, and he gained, under certain perfectly justi- 
fiable restrictions, more than he had deemed possible, and 
at last became himself somewhat impressed by the great 
mass of material to be digested for his volumes. The field 
seemed without limit, and he resolved to cut short the accu- 
mulation and, returning to Washington, to await another 
opportunity to complete his English research, and to plan a 
similar visit to French archives. 

He now confidently expected to take up the Lije of his 
father and complete it within two years, and in this expecta- 
tion he called in the aid of others to reduce the new material 
to usable proportion, and to direct the study of printed 
sources. But other undertakings crowded upon him, which 
he did not feel inclined to set aside. At the urgent request 
of Johns Hopkins University he repeated in Baltimore his 
Oxford lectures, but rewritten in a much amplified form. He 
prepared an elaborate study of one incident in his father's 
career — the final defeat in the British Cabinet of foreign 
mediation between North and South in 1862 ^ — and in- 
tended to proceed in further studies as rapidly as his occa- 
sions would permit. The outbreak of the great European war 
aroused such interest in him and so engrossed his thoughts 
as to make concentration on the events of the past irksome 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVil. 56. 

2 Mr. Russell has since died. 

' A Crisis in Dozvnitig Street, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVII. 372. 



Public Service and History 



217 



to him. In view of what was passing before him, the War 
of Secession became of secondary importance, and he con- 
fessed to a sense of weariness in dealing with a subject which 
had lost so much of its moment in the world's history. He 
did complete a paper on the British Proclamation [of Neu- 
trality] of May, 1S61, largely based upon his English ma- 
terial, and printed it in January, 1915,1 but this formed his 
last contribution in the long series of historical studies he 
had made since 1876, a series as notable for its variety of 
topic as for its originality in presentation. Each consti- 
tuted a study of a certain event or problem in the diplomatic 
history of the War of Secession; but it was "thinking aloud" 
and did not give that. final conclusion which would have 
made a chapter in his book. To the last he was working 
over his material, recasting his sentences and moulding his 
opinion, and thus to the last his mind remained acrive, 
potent and creative. Exposure to cold overtaxed his body, 
and after a few days of illness the end came on March 20, 
1915, in Washington.^ 

W. C. F. 

' A Crisis in Dozening Street, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, xlviii. 190. 
2 Tributes to his memory are given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLViir 
383-423. 



THE END 



Index 



Index 



Abdalrahman, Calif, on happy days, 211. 

Adams family, unique quality, xiii; inherit- 
ance, xvi; Lowell on, 30. 

Adams, Abigail (Brooks), xvii; death of, 9. 

Adams, Abigail (Smith), 9, 181. 

Adams, Brooks, 9. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Sr., xv; out- 
door sports, XX, 11; Puritan quality, xx, 
10, 11; measure of, xxi; Lodge on, xxii; 
policy in i860, xxviii; in Boston, 5; at 
Quincy, 10; nomination to Vice-Presi- 
dency, 32; Seward's recognition of, 52; 
policy in 1S61, 73, 87, 90, 109; on Lin- 
coln, 77; English mission, 107; delay in 
reaching post, iii; biography of, 206. 

Adams, Charles Francis (1835-1915), 
hereditary element, xiii; birth, xvii, 3; 
early dislike of Boston, xviii; outdoor 
sports, xix, 10; schooling and errors of 
education, xxii, 13; Harvard College, 
xxiv, 24; aptitude, xxv, xiii, 25; writing, 
26; diary, 27, 1 10; associates, 28; shy- 
ness, 30; first vote, 32; law study, xxvi, 
38, 171; Atlantic article, 41; admitted to 
Bar, 41; miUtia service, xxix, 43, 114; on 
House of Representatives, 44; campaign- 
ing with Seward, 52, 60; J. Q. Adams's 
speeches, 55; meets Lincoln, 64; on 
Southern unrest, 70; Washington, 1861, 
72; on Sumner's attitude, 83; at Fort 
Independence, 114, 116; on outbreak of 
war, 115; on Bull Run, 122; hesitation, 
123; applies for commission, 125; first 
lieutenant, xxx, 128; service, xxxi, 130; 
want of training, 130; leaves for the 
front, 132, 139; war letters, 134; trying 
experience, 136, 186; first engagement, 
140; before Sumter, 143; ill health, xxxii, 
143, 157, 162, 166; visits Europe, 149, 
168; at Gettysburg, 149, 153; Antictam, 
151; at headquarters, 156; Wilderness 
campaign, 158; commended by Meade, 
159; before Petersburg, 162; engagement 
and marriage, 164, 168; an error of judg- 
ment, 165; return to private life, 169; 
railroad problem, xxxiii, IC7; commis- 
sioner, 172; at Quincy, xxxvi, 6, 172; 



town government, 177; Mill on Comte, 
179; Weymouth address, 180; Three 
Episodes, 182, 197; Vienna exposition, 
xl, 183; Union Pacific R.R., xxxviii, 184, 
191; parks and reservations, 185; busi- 
ness ventures, 187; history, xiii, 195; 
Massachusetts Historical Society, xlvi, 
196, 208; Harvard Overseer, xli, 198, 
200; crisis of 1893, 199; removes from 
Quincy, 202; in Boston, 204; Life of 
C. F. Adams, 206, 212; Lee's centennial, 
206; last years, xlviii, 212; summary 
of life, 208; investigations in England, 
212, 214; Oxford lectures, 213; self-crit- 
icism, 1; wide activities, li; not in public 
life, li; individualism, liii, 17; political 
parties, liv; questioning spirit, Ivii. 

Adams, Henry, 76, 90; Education of, xvi, 
xix, 46; estimate of father, xxi; at Har- 
vard, 24; letter from London, 119. 

Adams, John, 9. 

Adams, John (1803-1834), 9. 

Adams, John Quincy, 48; marriage of, 
xvi; recollections of, 9; death, 31; Davis 
on, 48; Calhoun and, 52, 58; speeches, 
55; diary, 68; Russell, 155. 

Adams, John Quincy (1833-1894), 12, 39, 
40, 42, 58, 133; town of Quincy, xxxvii, 
177; at Hingham, 16; Boston Latin 
School, 22; popularity, 29; marriage, 
III, 117. 

Adams, Louisa Catherine (1831-1870), 11, 
164. 

Adams, Louisa Catherine (Johnson), 9. 

Adams, Mary (Hellen), 9. 

Adams, Mary Louisa, 9. 

Adams, Mary (Ogden), xxxii, 164. 

Ames, Frederick Lothrop, 191. 

Ancestry, xii. 

Antictam campaign, 145, 151. 

Aptitudes, 20. 

Astor House columns, 4. 

Bancroft, George, 16. 
Bancroft, George, Jr., 16 n. 
Bancroft, John Chandler, 16 n. 
Bar, admission to, 41. 



222 



Index 



Barlow, Francis Charming, 29. 

Beaufort, S. C, 139. 

Belligerency, recognition of Southern, III. 

Benjamin, Judah Philip, 94. 

Benton, Thomas Hart, 58. 

Bigelow, George Tyler, xxvii, 4I. 

Bigelow, Jacob, 209. 

Bigelow, John, 45. 

Biography and history, x. 

Blair, Montgomery, loi. 

Blue Hills reservation, 185. 

Boarding-schools, xxii, 16. 

Boston, xviii; First Church, 14; society, 

39, 205. 
Boston Latin School, xxiii, 21. 
Boston & Maine R.R., strike, 174. 
Breckenridge, John Cabell, 94. 
Briggs, Albert D., 173. 
Brooks, Peter Chardon, 4, J. 
Brooks, Phillips, 29. 
Buchanan, James, 96. 
Buffalo convention, 1848, 32. 
Bull Run, battle of, 122. 
Butler, Benjamin Franklin, misconduct, 

159; proposed statue, 161. 
Butterfield, Daniel, 161. 

Calhoun, John Caldwell, 59; J. Q. Adams 

and, 54, 58; disappointment, 58. 
Campaign, presidential, i860, xxviii, 69. 
Carlyle, Thomas, on history, x. 
Chamberlain, Samuel Emery, 147, 155. 
Chapters oj Erie, xxxv, xliii, 172, 196. 
Chase, Samuel Portland, 74. 
Chess, advantages of, 34. 
Clay, Cassius Marcellus, 78. 
Clay, Henry, 58, 59. 
Cogswell, Aaron, 174. 
College Fetich, 197. 
Comet of 1 86 1, 120. 
Concord muster, 43. 
Cotton and the South, 41, 91. 
Crane, Thomas, library, Quincy, xxxvii. 
Crisis, financial, 1893, 199. 
Crittenden, John Jordan, 88, 91. 
Crowninshicld, Caspar, 122, 124, 133, 138. 
Cullom, George Milner-Gibson, 215. 
Curtis, Greeley, 146, 147. 

Dalton, Edward Barr)-, 29; character of, 

162. 
Dana, Richard Henry, 38; position at bar, 



xxvi; life of, xlv, 198; voyage round the 

world, 56; on Bull Run defeat, 122; on 

Trent affair, 127. 
Davis, Henry Winter, 46, 98. 
Davis, Jefferson, 48, 105. 

Davis, , 139. 

Dayton, William Lewis, 107. 

Denny, George Huchcson, 207. 

Dexter, Arthur, 40, 78, 82, 99. 

Dexter, Samuel, 78. 

Dillon, Sidney, 192. 

Dixwell, Epes Sargent, 22. 

Douglas, Stephen Arnold, 47, lOO; calls on 

Seward, 65. 

Eames, Fanny (Campbell), 91, 103. 
Education, defect of system, 20. 
Eliot, Charles William, 36. 
Ellis, George Edward, 208. 
Emancipation under war power, 56. 
Equality, social, 15. 
Europe, influence of, 19. 

Families, generations of distinction, xiii. 

Family influence, 170. 

Felton, Cornelius Conway, 26. 

Fessenden, William Pitt, 47. 

Fink, Albert, 191. 

Fish, Hamilton, 58. 

Fort Independence, garrison service, 114, 

116. 
Fort Sumter, Seward on, 106. 
France in 1866, 169. 
Frothingham, Nathaniel Langdon, 14. 
Furness, Horace Howard, 29. 

Gardiner, Sir Christopher, 197. 
Gettysburg campaign, 147, 153; Sedg- 
wick's march, 149. 
Giddings, Joshua Reed, 48, 55. 
Gordon, George Henn,', 121. 
Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 21. 
Grant, Ulysses Simpson, 157. 
Greek, teaching of, 26. 
Greenleaf, Daniel, 12. 

Hancock, Winfield Scott, 157. 

Harvard University, class of '57, 24; elec- 
tive, 34; defect of system, 35, 200; am- 
bition for, 210. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 51; on Salem, 202. 

Heritage, burden of, xv. 

Hicks, Thomas Holliday, 78. 



Index 



223 



Higginson, Henr>' Lee, 140, 146, 147. 

Higginson, Thomas Wcntworth, 38, 146. 

Hilton Head, S. C, 139, I43- 

Hingham, school days, 16. 

History, beginnings of, ix. 

Hodson, William Stephen Raikes, 144. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on education, xiii. 

Hooker, Joseph, 160. 

House of Representatives, national, in 

1859, 43. 
Hughes, Thomas, Hodson, 144. 
Humphreys, Andrew Atkinson, xxxi, 136, 

165; character, 157. 
Humphreys, James, 180. 
Hunter, Robert Mercer Taliaferro, 106. 

James Island, 140. 

Johnson, Andrew, 78; impressions of, 79; 

conversation with, 92. 
Johnson, Francis M., 173. 
Johnston, Harriet (Lane), 49. 

Kansas, visit to, 63. 

Kansas City development, 187. 

Kimball, David Pulsifer, 22. 

King, Austin Augustus, 95. 

Kuhn Louisa Catherine (Adams), 164. 

Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, 46. 

Lane, Harriet, 49. 

Lane, Joseph, 94. 

La Tremoille, family of, xiv. 

Lee, Agnes, 91. 

Lee, Henr>% on cavalry regiment, 146. 

Lee, Robert Edward, 90; centennial ad- 
dress, 206. 

Lee, William Henrj' Fitzhugh, 91 n. 

Legislation, excessive, 175. 

Life of R. H. Dana, xlv. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 73; campaign of i860, 
xxviii, 61; meeting with Seward, 63; in 
1861, 7S; vein of sentiment, 96; inau- 
guration, 1 861, 96; reception by, 100; 
Seward and, 104. 

Lincoln, Mary (Todd), 103. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, memorial address, 
ix; on C. F. Adams, Sr., xxii. 

Lowell, Charles, 162. 

Lowell, James Russell, on the Adams fam- 
ily, 30; editor Atlantic, 41. 

Lunt, William Parsons, 14, 32. 
Lyman, Theodore, 135, 154. 



Macaulay's History, 25. 

Mason, James Murray, 47, 106; seized by 

Wilkes, 127. 
Massachusetts; railroad commission, 
xxxiv, 172; park system, xl; cavalry, ist 
regiment, 137, 146; parks and reserva- 
tions, 185; street railways, 186. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, Mr. 
Adams's services, xlvi, 196, 208. 

Meade, George Gordon, 154, 157, 158. 

Memory, Montaigne on, 20. 

Mendelian law of heredity, xvi. 

Merrymount Park, Quincj-, xxxvii. 

Middlesex Fells, 185. 

Milford (Mass.) Gazette, 44. 

Mill, John Stuart, Comte, 179. 

Millet, Frank Davis, 183, 208. 

Money-getting, instinct of, 190. 

Montaigne, Michel, birth of, 3 ; memory, 20. 

Morehead, James Turner, 91. 

Morse, John Torrey, Jr., 146. 

Mt. Wollaston, 40. 

Muscles, slowness of, 18. 

Negro, as cavalry, 166. 
Nicholson, Alfred Osborn Pope, 93. 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 30; North American 

Re'oie'x, 170. 
Nye, James Warren, 61. 

Ogden, Edward, xxxii, 164, 183. 
Ogden, Mar>-, xxxii, 164. 
Orange-Nassau, house of, xiii. 
Otis, AUeyne, 19. 

Palfrey, Francis Winthrop, 23, 40, 124. 
Palfrey, John Gorham, 23, 57, 59; post- 
master at Boston, 100, 109. 
Palmerston, Lord. See Temple. 
Parker, Francis Edward, character, xxvi, 

38, 42. 
Parties, political, liv. 
Pennington, William, incompetency as 

Speaker, 44, 92. 
Pepys, Samuel, 68. 

Perkins, Stephen George, 28, 37, 121, 143. 
Phi Beta Kappa addresses, xU, 201, 207. 
Plantagenets, abilities in the, xiii. 
Pleasanton, Alfred, 145. 
Politics, association with, 31. 
Prj-or, Roger Atkinson, 44. 
Publicity, 175. 



224 



Index 



Quincy school system, xxxvii; Crane li- I Stetson, 
brary, ixxvii; Merrymount Park, xxxvii; 
life in, 6; granite quarries, 6; leaving, 
202. 



14. 



Railroads, problems of, xxxiii, 171. 

Randolph, John, 23. 

Revere, Paul Joseph, 124. 

Rhodes, James Ford, 160, 213. 

Ritchie, Harrison, 129. 

Rives, William Cabell, 78. 

Rome, visited, 168. 

Russell, Henry Sturgis, xxxi, 117, 143 

163, 165. 
Russell, Jonathan, 155. 
Russell, Hon. Rollo, 214. 
Russell, William Howard, 76, 104, 112; on 

Sumner, 86. 

Sargent, Horace Binney, 125; 139, 146, 
147. 

Sargent, Lucius Manlius, Sr., 139. 

Sargent, Lucius Manlius, 139, 147. 

Schurz, Carl, 103, 184. 

Scott, Winfield, 98. 

Sedgwick, John, march to Gettysburg, of 
corps, 149; character, 157. 

Seward, VVilliam Henry, 47, 7c, 92, 95; 
campaign of i860, xxviii, 52, 60; visits 
Quincy, 52, 57; republican leader, 57; 
on public life, 58, 60; appearance, 59; 
free liver, 62; meets Lincoln, 63; Doug- 
las and, 65; at home, 67; policy, 1861, 
73, 87, 105, 212; Sumner on, 81; calm of, 
82; foreign war panacea, 89, 1 19; on Lin- 
coln, 96, 104; Secretary of State, 104; 
instructions to Adams, 112. 

Sheridan, Philip Henry, 158. 

Sherman, John, 46. 

Sherman, William Tecumseh, 158. 

Sickles, Daniel Edgar, 161, 

Sleeping car, 65. 

Slidell, John, seized by Wilkes, 127. 

Smelting, 12. 

Smith, Abigail, 9, 181. 

Smith, William, 181. 

Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides, 26. 

South, unrest in the, 70; after Lincoln's 
inauguration, 99. 

Sports, outdoor, xix, 10. 

Staff service, 135. 

Stetson, Caleb, 14. 



Sumner, Charles, 37, 74, 79; early associa- 

■ tion, 32; appearance, 47, 59; speech on 
'Barbarism of Slavery,' 53; Calhoun and 
J. Q. Adams, 54; on Adams's speeches, 
55; excited utterances, 80; on Seward, 
81; explanation of attitude, 83; estimate 
of, 89; on Lincoln's inaugural, 97; Pal- 
frey's appointment, loi; unforgiving, 
102; change in attitude, 102. 

Sunday, observance of, 13. 

Swimming, 18. 

Temple, Henry John, Viscount Palmer- 

ston, 58. 
Thomas, George Henry, 158. 
Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, 

xliv, 182, 197. 
Three Phi Beta Addresses, 201, 207. 
Tower, David Bates, 21. 
Transatlantic Historical Solidarity, 214. 
Trent affair, 127. 
Trout streams on Cape, xix. 
Troy & Greenfield R.R., 184. 
Trumbull, Lyman, 61, 64. 
Trunk Line arbitration, 191. 

Union Pacific Railroad, xxxLx, 184, 191. ^ 

Vane, Sir Henry, execution of, 68. 
Vienna exposition, xl, 183. 
Virginia, described, 92. 

Warren, Gouverneur Kemble, 157. 
Washburn, William Barrett, 183. 
W'ashington, in 1859, 48; 1861, 72. 
Webb, James Watson, 95. 
Webster, Daniel, 59; fisher, xLx; opposed to 

J. Q. Adams, 32. 
West, the, 62. 

Weymouth, address at, 180. 
White House reception, 1861, 99. 
Wigfall, Louis Trezevant, 95. 

Wilder, , 16. 

Wilderness campaign, 158. 
Wilkes, Charles, Trent affair, 127. 
Wilkinson, Morton Smith, 79, 84. 
Williams, Robert, 138, 140, 143, 145. 
Winthrop, John, material on, 215. 

Yarnell Ellis, 86. 
Yulee, David Levy, 94. 



